My Old Son
by Pickwick12
Summary: All about the developing relationship of Gotham's Bruce Wayne and Alfred Pennyworth as they cope with the deaths of Thomas and Martha Wayne, because they deserve more fanfiction. Will follow the show but have original content. Potential spoilers for any episodes that have aired on US TV. Chapters 1-86 are companions to Season 1, 87-131 to S2, and 132 on go with S3
1. The Littlest Wayne

**The Littlest Wayne**

Alfred hasn't held a baby in years when Martha Wayne brings home her late-life child. He's a beautiful boy, with dark hair and big, deep eyes. Thomas, the proud father, says they'll hire a nurse or a nanny to help care for the child while his wife, who's not the youngest of mothers, regains her health.

The butler says no. The moment he takes the boy in his arms and stares down into the face of Bruce Wayne, he knows that there will never be a need for another caretaker. He's besotted with the child, a perfect combination of two people he has come to love deeply.

He takes to caring for the baby with relative ease, the way he's always been able to care for people, no matter their ages. Bruce doesn't cry often. He's more given to quietly looking around him, as if he's memorizing every detail about the world.

On long winter nights, while Thomas and Martha attend an endless stream of charitable functions, Alfred sits at home in the giant wing chair in the library, with the littlest Wayne held to his chest, and he is happy.

Six months after Bruce's birth, Thomas and Martha ask Alfred to eat dinner with them. They wouldn't mind if he ate at the table every night, but he likes to preserve the formalities. This time, though, he honors their wishes and sits down to supper with them.

"Alfred," says Thomas, smiling, "we have a request for you. Please don't feel obligated. It's not part of your job."

Martha takes up where he left off. "We're going to modify our wills to include Bruce, and—we'd like to ask you to be his guardian if anything ever happens to us."

Alfred stares down at his plate of roast beef and wills himself to breathe evenly. He has done many things in his thirty-eight years, but suddenly, none of them seem important any more, not as important as this moment. No one has ever trusted him with something so precious.

"If you'd like to think about it, that's fine," says Thomas, still smiling in his easy way.

Alfred does think about it. He thinks of the tiny boy asleep in his crib and the smiles that catch him off guard every single day. He imagines the future, of picking Bruce up from school, hearing about his first girlfriend, watching him learn to drive.

He says yes. Of course he says yes. He cannot imagine a world in which anyone else takes away the privilege of caring for Bruce Wayne.


	2. Three People

**Three People**

Bruce Wayne has three people.

He has a mom, who is pretty, and smiles, and smells of the spices in her perfume. He adores her with all the force of his four-year-old personality, which is considerable. He doesn't know that he's intelligent or that he understands things most children his age can't comprehend. He also doesn't know that most children don't live in houses like Wayne Manor. What he does know is that he likes to sit quietly on his mother's dresser while she does her hair and puts on her makeup. She's like a princess from one of the fairy tales his father loves to read to him.

His father, Thomas Wayne, is a doctor. Bruce loves to touch the tools he brings home, like the stethoscope that lets him hear his heartbeat. He does not know that some children have angry, impatient fathers who don't let them rifle through their briefcases or patiently answer every question they ask. What he does know is that his father is the smartest man in the world, because he knows all the things Bruce can't wait to wonder about. Every night his father is home, Bruce drifts off to sleep to the sound of his low voice reading stories that fill his mind with thoughts of knights and kings. The other nights, when his father isn't home, there's Alfred.

Bruce thinks all children have an Alfred. Alfred isn't his father or his mother. He's the one who bandages Bruce's knees when he falls down while his parents are gone. He knows he's not supposed to run in the house; there's too much to knock into. Alfred scolds him, but he isn't angry. He puts something under the bandage that makes the pain go away. Alfred is also the one who makes him peanut butter sandwiches for dinner when Thomas and Martha are away for the evening. He cuts the crusts off; Bruce is a picky child. When it's time for bed, Alfred doesn't sing, like Martha, or read fairy tales, like Thomas. He changes Bruce into his pajamas and takes him to the library. Bruce invariably falls asleep with his head on his butler's chest, the cocoon of Alfred's arms around him. He loves his parents, but in those nights, he doesn't miss them because he feels perfectly safe.


	3. Polishing

**Polishing**

Alfred is polishing the silver. It's the most clichéd job for a butler, but it's still one that has to be done. The Waynes entertain regularly, and it wouldn't do for their guests to be served with anything but the finest china and the heirloom silver. He doesn't mind, anyway. He finds it meditative to polish each piece to sparkling clarity. Some jobs, like the dusting and laundry, are never really done. As soon as one room or load is complete, another demands attention. But the silver reaches pristine perfection under his hands piece by piece, and he experiences the satisfaction of a job well done.

He's mid-fork when he feels a tug on the edge of his sleeve. "Master Bruce, are you all right?" He's instantly attentive to the six-year-old at his side. The little boy nods, but stares up at him with a quizzical expression.

"What's a butler, Alfred?" he finally asks.

"Me, Master Bruce," he says with a smile, thinking this is the easiest question the inquisitively-minded child has ever asked him. Usually, he finds himself surreptitiously checking Google on his phone to try to answer queries like, "Alfred, why is the sky blue?" or "Alfred, what are soccer balls made out of?"

But Bruce isn't satisfied. "I know that," he says, sounding indignant at the slight to his intelligence. "My teacher at Kindergarten said you're our butler," he explains, but then his face falls a little bit. "I didn't know what she meant, though."

Alfred thinks hard. This isn't as easy as he thought. He doesn't want to bring the idea of money and income discrepancy into a discussion with a six-year-old, and he doesn't want to talk about Ironing and cooking; that's not the heart of his job, anyway. But those dark, intense eyes are staring up at him, demanding an answer.

Finally, Alfred kneels down to be at eye level with the little boy. "What do you think I do here, Master Bruce?"

"That's easy," says the little boy. "You take care of us."

"Exactly," Alfred answers, relieved. "That's exactly what a butler is, the one who takes care of you."

He stands up and puts his big hands around the child's middle, lifting him onto the table next to where the piles of sliver lay. Bruce has a strangely long attention span for a child, and he curls his legs under him and watches silently as Alfred polishes each piece. After a while, the butler hands him the cloth and a spoon. "Want to try?" With delicate carefulness, Bruce repeats the motions he's seen Alfred do, and he slowly brings out the shine in the previously-dull piece of cutlery. "Very good, Master Bruce," says Alfred, taking it from him and proudly laying it in the finished pile.

He enjoys teaching Bruce. It might not be particularly useful for the heir to the Wayne fortune to know how to polish cutlery, but there are other things Alfred knows how to do that neither Thomas nor Martha Wayne can teach their son, things he learned in his past life. He's saving most of those for later, for when Bruce is closer to manhood, but he's already experimenting, teaching himself how best to teach the boy. He has a feeling it will come in handy some day.

Bruce's mother and father are brilliant people who adore their son, but they have carved out a place for the butler in Bruce's life, and Alfred is grateful. He doesn't mind the act of polishing, gently repeating the same motion over and over, until he's able to bring out the absolute best in something, and Bruce Wayne is a lot more valuable to him than silver forks.


	4. Old Son

**Old Son**

Bruce is angry, and he doesn't know why. Sometimes he hears his parents talking quietly, and they whisper that he's entering adolescence early, that it's not unexpected for a child as precocious as he is to start being moody at nine. After all, he's always been intense.

These days, his relationship with Alfred is a little bit different from how it used to be. He knows now what a butler is, not just for the Waynes, but in general. He understands that Alfred is an employee. Alfred feels it; Bruce can tell.

Truth is, Bruce doesn't exactly know why he's started to resent Alfred, but he can feel that the butler's expectations for him are changing. He's no longer just teaching him things like how to polish silver; he's training him to be a Wayne. "Stand up straight, Master Bruce. Don't be rude, Master Bruce. Look at people when you're speaking to them, Master Bruce."

He's always been a well-behaved child, his transgressions more about curiosity and testing than outright rebellion. But his feelings are going haywire these days, and sometimes, when the butler takes a certain tone, Bruce just stands in front of him with his arms folded. He doesn't say no, but there's no acquiescence, either.

Alfred has never been a disciplinarian. The relatively few times in his life when Bruce has needed correcting, it's been Thomas or Martha who make the decisions. They're not particularly strict parents, but they do expect respect. He doesn't disrespect Alfred around them, and the butler never tells on him. That's how, at nine years of age and four months, Bruce Wayne and his butler reach an unhappy stalemate that includes an angry little boy and a—well, Bruce doesn't know how Alfred feels about it. He figures the man is probably too angry at him to ever want to talk to him again. He's slammed too many doors.

It's a Tuesday night, and Thomas and Martha don evening clothes to attend a hospital opening. "Can't I come?" Bruce asks, not wanting to be left in the house with the butler.

"I'm sorry, but you need to be bright for school tomorrow," says his mother, giving him a quick kiss on the forehead. "Alfred will take care of you."

Alfred will take care of you. He doubts it.

That's why, when his parents leave, he barricades himself in his room and doesn't come out, even when it's the normal time for dinner. A few minutes past, he hears a sharp knock on his locked door. "Master Bruce!" Alfred doesn't sound happy. "If you're not planning to eat dinner, I'm going to pack it up and give it to the homeless children on the street." The butler has never resorted to threats, and he's never actually punished Bruce. The child sits on his bed and curls up into his bedspread, not wanting to face the man's wrath.

The problem is, Bruce's stomach doesn't get the message. An hour passes, then another, and he's so hungry he feels like eating the stuffing out of his pillow. Finally, a timid Bruce Wayne peeks out of his bedroom door and finds the hallway empty. He's a far cry from the angry, defiant boy who has filled Wayne manner with the slamming sounds of his wrath. He's just a little boy who wants dinner. And he wants Alfred, but he's afraid Alfred doesn't want him.

Reluctantly, he makes his way through the house, relieved that he doesn't have to face his butler unexpectedly. When he gets to Wayne Manor's spacious kitchen, he peeks around the open doorframe and sees Alfred with his back turned to him, washing dishes across the room.

The man has always had extremely keen hearing, and he turns as soon as Bruce sets foot in the room. "Master Bruce?" He doesn't look angry; the little boy is glad, but his heart keeps pounding.

"I—I'm sorry, Alfred. Could I have something to eat?" He sounds like a child, and he knows it.

In an instant, the butler's face melts into a smile. "Of course you can, but first—" He opens his arms and inclines his head. It's an invitation Bruce never expected, and he rushes into the man's embrace with a vehemence that surprises even him.

Alfred's arms close around him, and he relaxes into the comfort, feeling months of anger and misunderstanding melt away in a few important moments. "My old son," the butler murmurs, "I'll always take care of you. Never forget that."


	5. Understandings

**Understandings**

"Oy, Master Bruce, what have I told you about hiding behind the curtains and scaring me half to death?"

Alfred is dusting the windowsills of Wayne Manor, and for the third time in a month, he finds a dark-haired boy waiting for him behind a thick, gray curtain. Bruce hangs his head a little, but he also smirks out one side of his mouth. He knows Alfred is a little bit proud of his ability to hide so well. They have an understanding now, and the butler doesn't really mind. He gives Bruce a whack on the shoulder that is really more of a pat, and propels him out into the sitting room.

They've passed the hardest times, Alfred lets himself hope. At twelve, Bruce now knows exactly what a butler is, but he also knows Alfred Pennyworth is more than that. Sometimes, the older man lets himself think of the boy as a nephew. He's more open than ever in his critiques of behavior. Bruce is nearly a teenager, and he knows the Waynes look to him to help prepare their child for a very difficult life lived in view of a critical public. The boy is also more open with him, not that Bruce Wayne is ever one to communicate much in words. It's more about the tone of the words he does use and his willingness to ask the man who just yelled at him to eat his vegetables for advice about how to talk to the smartest girl in English class.

Alfred cares; Bruce knows. It's that simple and that complicated. The butler likes to hope that the boy cares back, not that he would ever admit it to anyone. He's human, after all, and he has no family of his own.

That night, the Waynes go to the opera, and Alfred takes a rare but well-earned night off. Before he leaves, he hears a familiar tap on his bedroom door and opens it to find Bruce with necktie in hand. "Could you do a Windsor Knot, Alfred?" the boy asks earnestly. "It's my mom's favorite."

"Of course, Master Bruce," the butler answers, not caring in the least that he's technically been off for two hours. He stands in front of the child and takes the impossibly small tie and places it around the boy's neck. "Watch and learn," he instructs, making the folds and loops slowly and deliberately. When he's finished, he turns Bruce toward the floor-length mirror. "I think that'll do. What about you?"

Bruce flashes a rare grin that entirely changes his sober face into something lighter and more childlike. "Thanks, Alfred!" He leaves the room quickly, calling for his parents.

* * *

**Because I'm evil and such, I hope this one hits you deeply in the feels. Thanks for the comments and messages. I love you all. We're (obviously) getting to where the show starts, so expect analysis of what we've seen so far. I'd like to say something about this version of Alfred 1) I don't think he's evil or abusive. It's incredibly obvious to me that he cares deeply about Bruce and is desperately worried about him. All of his reactions have struck me as completely genuine for a parental figure who sees his son/ward standing on the edge of a very tall roof or deliberately injuring parts of his body. 2) I don't expect Alfred at this point in the timeline to act exactly like Alfred in 20 years. Will he grow into that? Of course. But at the moment, he's an unmarried, Marine veteran butler trying to come to terms with being the primary caretaker of an angry, complicated, and extremely intelligent adolescent child. **

**p.s. Yes, Bruce likes the smartest girl in English class. Because he does. Hmmph**


	6. Necktie

**Necktie**

Necktie, necktie, Bruce sees Alfred and remembers the comforting feeling of the butler's hands as he helped him form the Windsor Knot his mother loves. Loved. She's gone.

He flings off his black shock blanket and runs helter-skelter toward the one person left whose arms he's absolutely sure will be open for him. Alfred doesn't disappoint, accepting him into his embrace and holding him tightly. For a moment, Bruce's feet don't touch the ground. For a moment, all he feels is comfort.

Then, his dress-shoed feet hit the asphalt once again, the asphalt that welcomed the bodies of his parents as they bled out. It's the most blood he's ever seen.

Alfred speaks quietly to him. Instructions, like the military officers in war movies. He tells him to keep going, not to let anyone see him cry. Bruce knows he simply means, "Be brave." He also knows, through the haze of his shock and grief, that Alfred is trying to keep him safe. He's well aware of the audience that follows the Wayne family wherever they go. His father has told him time and time again that he has a responsibility to the city and that he must be strong so that no one can attack him for being weak.

Alfred's big arm stays across his back for the whole way to the car. He's glad. Everything is freezing cold, and he puts his hand on his necktie, remembering his mother's delighted expression when she saw it and the warmth in her voice when she complimented his choice. "You're so handsome, Bruce," she said. "Just like your father." His parents had kissed. He'd made a face. Now he wishes he hadn't.

They don't speak until they reach Wayne Manor. "Would—you like me to help you get into your pajamas, Master Bruce?" Alfred asks. It's not a normal request at this age, but Bruce nods. He doesn't think he can do anything on his own.

The butler's hands are roughly gentle as they unbutton him to slip his black Egyptian cotton pajamas over his head. Bruce hasn't cried in over an hour, but tears run down his face as he slowly unties the Windsor Knot around his neck. He feels like he's untying his family from his heart.

"No, not those," he says quickly, softly, desperately. The cotton pajamas were a Christmas gift from his father the year before. He can't stand to wear them.

"Which ones, then?" Alfred asks, not arguing.

"Just—just a T-shirt and shorts," Bruce says. It's not his normal sleep attire, but Alfred hands him clean gym shorts and slips a soft, threadbare gray T-shirt over his head.

Bruce gets into bed of his own accord, staring blankly at the ceiling above him. Alfred pulls the leather chair away from the boy's wooden study desk and pulls it over next to his charge. "It's ok, Alfred," says Bruce. "You can go." His voice hitches. He can't stop the tears that keep coming, coming, coming, over and over.

"Not tonight, Bruce," says the butler, reaching over to stroke the shiny, dark hair that falls over the little boy's forehead.

He can't remember a time when Alfred hasn't used "Master" to address him. He turns on his side and looks into the face of his butler, wondering what the older man is thinking, not minding the touch of his hand. He doesn't believe he'll ever sleep again, but finally he falls into slumber, tired from grief and soothed by Alfred's closeness.


	7. Climbing

**Climbing**

The next morning, Alfred is jolted from his uncomfortable sleep in Bruce's desk chair by the sound of the little boy moving around. He rubs his bleary eyes; he might have slept a total of an hour all night. He didn't want to miss any signs of the boy being distressed. Thankfully, sheer weariness appeared to keep the boy from nightmares, and Alfred had finally allowed himself a short doze as early morning approached.

"I'll fix your breakfast," he says, as soon as Bruce's eyes open.

The boy shakes his head. "I'm not hungry. Could I be alone?"

"Of course," says Alfred, getting up and replacing the chair behind his charge's desk. He doesn't think missing a meal will be harmful, and he certainly doesn't want to force the boy, not on this day of all days.

The butler was once a Marine, not that many people who have encountered him in his current life are aware of it. He has seen many men die, and he has seen other men deal with those deaths in their different ways. Some grieve loudly, some silently, and he has never thought it was his to judge how another person processes pain. That's why he leaves Bruce Wayne's room without another word. One part of him wonders if it's wise, but another part holds him back from trying to steer the child's emotions away from something neither of them can escape.

Truthfully, Alfred can't eat either. He keeps himself busy by starting on the massive list of tasks he knows must be set into motion. His first call is to Bruce's school, to withdraw him for the time being. He doesn't know if the change will be permanent, but he's perfectly competent to school the boy at home. It wouldn't be right, he thinks, to subject Bruce to the stares and the whispers. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

Next, he calls about funeral arrangements. The Waynes had been thorough; they had long since set a plan into motion that only requires him to say "yes" to one man, and everything is set. He doesn't call Wayne Enterprises. He knows they'll call him.

His list dwindles more quickly than he'd like, and he gets up to check on Bruce, peeking into the living room to find the boy sitting on the floor, staring at nothing. He resists the urge to enter, to ask questions. He does not want to intrude on needed solitude.

It's late afternoon, and Alfred has done everything he can think of to do, other than let himself think about Thomas and Martha Wayne. He prepared lunch, but Bruce never came to eat it, and neither did he. He does another pass over the house to find Bruce, but this time, he doesn't find him.

Trying not to be unduly frantic, Alfred goes outside the house and starts looking around the grounds, when his gaze travels up. He sees the toes of a familiar pair of brown Oxfords peeking over the edge of the roof. His heart contracts, and he can't breathe, but still he yells.

"Bruce! Get off the roof THIS INSTANT!" His tone is harsh; he doesn't care. He would rather see tears fall from the child's eyes than his body fall off the Wayne Manor roof.

To his relief, he's obeyed. Within a couple of minutes, a sheepish Bruce is standing in front of him, eyes downcast. Alfred lifts the boy's chin, forcing him to meet his eyes. "What was that about, Master Bruce?"

"I—I don't want to be afraid anymore," says the child. That's all. No more explanation than that.

Alfred closes his eyes. He has no idea what to do. He puts his hands on Bruce's shoulders. "No more climbing on the roof, or I'll never let you out of my sight again," he says, not unkindly.

"Ok," says Bruce, pulling free of his grasp and running back into the house without looking back. Alfred shakes his head. He's out of his depth.

By nighttime, Alfred can't think of a single additional unnecessary task to take his mind away from the grief that threatens to overtake him. Bruce has been back in his spot on the living room floor for the past two hours, and the butler has no idea what he should do, so he lets him stay there.

Weary, he takes off all his extra layers of clothing, until he's only wearing his dress slacks and an untucked white shirt. Seeking his own kind of comfort, he makes his way to the library, to the wing chair where he used to spend night after night lulling Bruce to sleep. Finally, he lets himself think. He allows his mind to drift to the faces of Thomas and Martha Wayne, the kindest people he's ever had the privilege of knowing. Like family.

Alfred props his elbow on the armrest of his chair and buries his face in his hand, feeling sobs wrack his body. He's been strong; he can't be strong forever. He has seen too many people die to believe the lie that grief can be subsumed permanently.

He doesn't know how long he cries before his ears pick up the soft sound of feet padding across the library carpet. He looks up, his eyes soaked with tears, to find Bruce in the doorway. He tries to smile, and the boy comes closer.

It's been years since Bruce Wayne has sat in anyone's lap. He's at the age where even his mother has had to steal hugs and kisses for the past few years. This night, much to Alfred's surprise, Bruce climbs into his lap exactly has he did when he was five years younger. He burrows deep into the butler's arms, as if he can't get deep enough, and the older man holds him as tightly as he can. He's still small, light and easy to hold. They neither one speak.

Alfred doesn't think Bruce has cried all day, but the boy presses his face into his butler's shoulder and weeps, hard tears that seem to come from somewhere deeper than shock. They're tears of real grief, of a boy trying to figure out what it means to lose almost everything. Alfred cries too, into Bruce's hair. He has no desire to conceal his pain from the child. He doesn't know how to handle everything, but he definitely knows that when a person grieves, having another to share that grief is better than nothing. The butler cradles his ward in his arms, and he feels more comfort than he has all day.


	8. Pain

**Warning: This chapter contains references to self-harm. **

**Pain**

Bruce is in his bathroom, running water over his fingers. He's bleeding. It's his own fault. He feels guilt, coming from somewhere deep and confusing. But he also knows he'll do it again. He's afraid of blood. It makes his stomach clench. That's why he has to bleed.

Fear is his enemy. Fear is what kept him from doing something the night his parents died.

"Master Bruce, are you all right?" Alfred's voice is concerned. "You've been in there an awfully long time." The boy blinks hard. Tears want to fall from his eyes, tears from the pain he's caused himself and the fear he can't help reliving, over and over, to try to make it go away.

"I'm fine, Alfred."

His butler is too smart for that. "You don't sound fine," he answers. "I'm coming in." He has picklocks. They've always had them in Wayne Manor. Bruce's father said they were in case there was a fire, so no one would be left behind.

The boy shuts off the water, but the trickle of red keeps falling from his thumb into the sink. He can't make it stop. He turns quickly when Alfred enters, standing almost at attention, closing his hand and willing the blood to stop coming.

"What's going on?" Alfred asks, scanning him quickly with his eyes. "You look paler than normal. Are you feeling well? What's—why is your hand bleeding?" Before Bruce can stop him, the butler takes the fingers of his left hand and gently unclenches them, seeing the red that stains his palm. Alfred's eyes widen. "That doesn't look like an accident to me, Master Bruce." The boy shakes his head, shifting his eyes so he doesn't have to meet the older man's.

"Why?" Alfred asks, even as he goes to the cabinet above the sink and pulls out a box of bandages, some peroxide, and a roll of surgical tape.

"I'm going to stop being scared," Bruce says, standing motionless with his hand outstretched.

Alfred comes over to him and begins working, his capable hands fashioning a bandage with enough pressure to stem the bleeding. "What—exactly—are you hoping to accomplish by giving yourself unnecessary pain?" The man's touch is gentle, but his tone is frustrated.

"I want to be strong," says Bruce.

The butler stops and puts his hands on the boy's shoulders. Somehow, the touch is comforting, even though Bruce can see that Alfred is angry. "Don't ever do something like this again," says the older man. "I—I don't know what I'd do if something happened to you, too." He walks away, leaving the boy standing in the middle of his bathroom, with tears stinging his eyes.

He will do it again. However much he doesn't want to, however much everything in him recoils at the thought, he knows that he will test himself again. Until-.

* * *

**I hope this chapter and the few following will seem respectful and sensitive to the topics mentioned. As someone who has struggled with self-harm, I write from a place of some internal understanding/identification with the issue. Gotham hasn't entirely unpacked Bruce's psyche for us yet, but it's pretty clear that there's a fine line between his desire to expel is fear and a desire to, perhaps, punish himself for his parents' deaths.**


	9. Frustration

**This chapter is dedicated to ButterflyFirefly. Thanks for being a great reader.**

**Warning: More mentions of self-harm. **

**Frustration**

Bruce is nowhere to be found.

It's a few days after the funeral, and Alfred has been trying to get the letters and emails from well-wishers in order, in case the boy ever wants to look at them. The problem is, there's no longer anyone else to look after Bruce when Alfred is busy. Normally, it would be all right to leave a twelve-year-old boy alone in another room of the house for a couple of hours, but not any more.

In the days since the shooting, Alfred has seen something in his ward's eyes that he's never seen before, some combination of fear, purpose, and anger, all wrapped up in confusion. He's bandaged bleeding fingers and only just stopped the boy from putting his hand in boiling water, and he's started to live his days afraid of what the next crisis will be.

He has no idea what to do. He promised, long ago, to take care of the Waynes' only child, and he would gladly give his life doing so. But he has no idea how to protect a child who is bent on hurting himself.

He has wondered if he should try to punish the boy, to use outside force to restrict inward impulses. But he can't restrict a child who has no interest in going anywhere, and Alfred recoils at the idea of any sort of physical punishment, certainly not of a child as old as Bruce Wayne and one who's going through deep grief.

The thing is, when he looks deep into Bruce's eyes, he realizes that the boy doesn't want to hurt himself. There's something else, some inward impetus that compels him to do exactly what he doesn't want to do.

The butler has suggested therapy, strongly, many times, and been met with stony silence. Under his breath, he has cursed Thomas Wayne's insistence that Bruce be allowed to make his own choices. Alfred is duty-bound to fulfill his promise, but he's begun to hate it.

He checks the roof, but Bruce isn't on it. From there, he goes over the house, room-by-room, terrified of what he may find. Finally, when he's near the end, he sees a door that is only open a crack and catches the scent of smoke.

Alfred Pennyworth prides himself on his patience. He has played the unflappable butler many a year. But when he sees Bruce Wayne's hand, his own fear threatens to choke him to death. "Stupid little boy" comes out of his mouth before he's had time to form a coherent thought, and he finds his hands around the child, but what he really wants is to throttle whatever it is inside Bruce Wayne that won't let the little boy go.

* * *

**I know some people want to see Alfred being more proactive as an authority figure, but I don't think we're there in the relationship yet, and I'm still waiting to see where Gotham takes us. **


	10. Deserving

**Warning: More mentions of self-harm.**

**Deserving**

"You, My Old Son, are a terrible liar."

When he hears _My Old Son_, Bruce dares to hope that maybe Alfred won't get angry. It's not the roof or the water or the knives. This time, it's the candle. He's never done that before. It's not like the butler can say he disobeyed a direct order.

At the same time, part of the boy feels like he deserves to have someone get angry at him. Everyone's been so _nice_, and he feels terrible inside. His hand feels like it's on fire, but it's what he deserves for being too afraid to act, too frozen to stop what happened in the alley that night.

Alfred says it's not his fault, but he doesn't believe him. Alfred wasn't there to see him when he just stood and watched a man shoot his father and his mother. Alfred didn't see how afraid he was.

He hates his fear, and he hates himself for feeling it. He's determined to conquer it, no matter how much pain it takes. The pain is good; it's a reminder of when he was weak, that he must never be weak again.

But he's still a little boy. Part of him wants to run into his mother's room and bury his face against her shoulder and feel her stroke his hair and tell him it's ok, that the things in his mind are less important than he thinks they are. That's what she always said when he had fears or nightmares. Somehow, she could always remind him that the world around him was bigger and brighter and better than the dark thoughts inside. But her room is empty now.

He has one person left, and that one person is the butler standing in front of him, demanding that he show the evidence of his pain. Slowly, he opens his hand, aware that he can't escape.

That's when Alfred's face changes, and Bruce's fear meets his shame. The older man grabs him, and he's absolutely sure he's going to get the comeuppance he deserves. He's terrified, but he doesn't struggle. He has no right to try to get away.

But no pain comes for him. Instead, through his island of fear and shame, he feels himself pulled into a sea of comfort, subsumed completely by the feeling of Alfred's entire self wrapped around him, holding him close, keeping him safe against his own feelings. "It's going to be all right."

Bruce's eyes close as he finally sinks into the solid comfort Alfred provides. Maybe—he lets himself hope—maybe if Alfred thinks he's still worth something, it could be a little bit true.

* * *

**I know I'm spending a lot of time on this one scene, but I think it was a pretty important one from both their perspectives. Hang tight and stay tuned for Gotham's nicest cop to make an appearance pretty soon.**


	11. Better

**Better**

"Stupid little boy."

It's Bruce's face that stops Alfred in his tracks, the look of absolute fear and dread, mixed with something that looks like resignation. The butler has never claimed to be perfect, and he doesn't know how to be a father, but he wants to hit himself for being the one to put that look on the little boy's face. All he wants is to see peace in those deep, troubled eyes.

Nothing works, nothing he tries to do, day in and day out, to comfort Bruce Wayne. He cooks the boy's favorite foods, and Bruce won't eat them. He checks on him every night, makes sure the blanket is up around his thin shoulders, only to see, in the morning, that the child has dark circles around his eyes that indicate he's hardly slept at all. He tries to distract him, but the moment they finish Bruce's daily schoolwork—he's intelligent, and it doesn't take that long—the boy is back to brooding over his drawings or his computer, and Alfred knows exactly what's on his mind.

He's not surprised, really, when the breaking point comes. After all, he, too, has hardly slept for several nights, between his guilt about not being there the one night the Waynes needed him most and his deep fear that one day, the little boy will go too far, and he won't be there to stop him.

It all bubbles to the surface when he sees Bruce's hand, but the moment Alfred realizes what he's done, that he's the one who's gone too far, his sleep-deprived, worried mind gives him the one idea that he needs most.

There's one thing that always works with Bruce Wayne. It might not be a permanent solution. It might not even last an hour, but it can fix a moment, of that Alfred is sure.

The butler kneels on the ground and puts his arms around the boy, feeling, again, how small Bruce is, how much of a child is still inside him. "I'm sorry," he says, meaning it, willing the tormented boy in his arms to give in to his affection.

And it works. For a single, comforting moment, Alfred feels Bruce relax against him as his breathing slows and the fear seeps out of him. He cradles the boy's head against his shoulder and strokes Bruce's dark hair, wishing for all the world that he could turn himself into Martha Wayne.

After a while, Bruce breaks away, and Alfred gets up, gratified to see that the look in his charge's eyes is a lot less frantic than it was. He puts his arm around the boy's shoulders and guides him to the kitchen. Wordlessly, he breaks off a piece of the aloe plant he keeps in the window and lets its juice drain onto the child's burn.

"Better?" he asks.

"Better," Bruce answers.

That's more than Alfred has been able to hope for for a very long time.


	12. Grim Eyes

**Grim Eyes**

"There will be light."

James Gordon is a grim-eyed cop with cop shoes and cop hair. Bruce has seen lots of cops. His parents used to tell him that if ever he was in danger, the police would be there to help. They haven't said that for a long time.

None of the other cops sit with him. One hands him a blanket, then goes back to writing in a notebook. Another one is on a phone. A crowd starts to gather, and whispers of "It's the Waynes" echo.

Bruce feels more alone than he's ever felt in his life. That's when Jim Gordon, the grim-eyed cop with cop shoes, sits down next to him and tells him a story. It's a sad story about a boy who saw his father die right beside him.

If the boy had heard the story the previous day, he would have felt sorry. Today, it pierces him with the knife blade of shared pain. Those grim eyes contain the memory of the same agony he feels. Gordon leans close, closer than normal. Bruce doesn't mind. It's as if he's sinking in quicksand, and someone cares enough to hold out a hand.

* * *

Bruce checks the news like most children eat chocolate cake, obsessively, cramming as much of it in as he can. When he sees the name "Jim Gordon," he stops scrolling and reads carefully.

Somebody's taking kids off the street, and the grim-eyed cop is the only one between them and—Bruce doesn't know what, but something terrible. He's never met a street kid.

But there's something ok about a guy who takes care of kids, even when he comes over to the house and fixes the boy with an "over it" stare. Bruce wonders for a moment what it would be like to have Jim Gordon as a full-time guardian. Somehow, he guesses he wouldn't be staying up until 3 a.m. listening to a police scanner every night.

He wants to help, like he imagines his father would have done. Thomas would have written a check so big it would have helped every one of those displaced kids.

Jim Gordon says no, but it's not an angry no. There's something like compassion in his grave blue eyes. Alfred usually treats the boy like an adult, if an unpredictable one, but Bruce sees himself reflected in Jim Gordon's eyes, and he knows without a doubt that the cop sees him as a little boy. There's something simultaneously unsettling and comforting about that.

Compromise. Compromise is a check that buys new clothes for every one of those kids and a thank you from Gordon that says he approves, even as he fixes Bruce with another one of those stares that makes the boy feel like those grim eyes can see into his soul.

'Those children need someone who cares for them. Like you have, right here. Money can't buy that."

Those words go around and around in Bruce's mind after Gordon is gone, and that night, he doesn't try to conquer the roof again. He eats his dinner. And when Alfred tells him to go to bed, he actually does. His reward is the half smile on his tired butler's face and the older man's hand absently ruffling his hair. He used to mind that. He doesn't any more.


	13. Help

**Help**

Alfred hasn't seen a good cop in years, and Thomas Wayne wasn't a naïve man. "In Gotham," he'd always say to his butler, "it's all about knowing where you stand. We're way beyond trusting people."

But the night of the murders, for a single moment, the butler looks into the face of James Gordon. He sees a young man on his first homicide case, older than his years, but somehow still without the shifty-eyed taint of the Gotham system on him.

The curious thing is how much Bruce respects him. The boy has never been one to give affection or trust easily. Alfred sometimes wonders where even he stands with Bruce, especially as the days pass. He's a legal guardian, but he's also a butler.

When he sees the boy hurt and confused, Alfred is reminded that he's caring for a child. But when that same child refuses dinner, again, and climbs the roof for the fourth time, the butler feels like he's dealing with an impossible little adult.

That's why he goes to see Jim Gordon.

Truth be told, Alfred isn't that surprised when the cop says he thinks Thomas Wayne's insistence on his child's autonomy is a recipe for disaster. The butler, privately, thinks the same thing, most of the time. But his relationship with Bruce contains the complications of years. There's a closeness, too, but sometimes closeness, when it encompasses pain and transition, looks a lot like distance.

"Those children need someone who cares for them. Like you have, right here. Money can't buy that."

Alfred can feel Bruce looking at him out of the corner of his eyes, and he wonders what the boy is thinking. There are some things the butler can't say, and he's beginning to appreciate the absolute directness of mind that compels the young cop to say them instead.

Gordon leaves, and Alfred wonders if calling on him was the right decision. He's not sure anything has changed.

Day turns to night, and Bruce stays in the house. He doesn't lead the butler on a chase to find him in some obscure corner or the edge of the roof. He even eats the dinner Alfred prepares and fully expects to throw out or give away. Out of force of habit, the butler steps into the living room and intones "Bed time, Master Bruce," at the appropriate time, anticipating no acknowledgement or obedience.

To his surprise, his ward gets up with a yawn and a "Good night, Alfred." As Bruce passes him in the doorway, the butler smiles and cards his hand through the little boy's hair.

He definitely doesn't regret asking Jim Gordon for help.


	14. En Garde

**En Garde**

Bruce Wayne doesn't play. Not any more. Not since That Night. Sometimes he draws and listens to music, but he doesn't play.

When his parents were alive, he wrestled. No one in Gotham would have believed the sight of Thomas Wayne with his only son and heir pinned to the Wayne Manor carpet, both of them laughing like maniacs.

He also had action figures. Superman was his favorite. The day of his parents' funeral, he put them away in a box and never looked at them again. He was twelve, and he had no parents. It was high time, he thought to himself, that he put away his toys and became a man.

Now he spends his days looking through files and listening to police reports, trying to find even a single clue. No more kids stuff. Just the real, ugly world of Gotham.

Except, Alfred won't let him grow up. It's Alfred who still turns on cartoons, so that when Bruce wakes up, Daffy Duck is dancing across the tablet computer on the end of his bed. It's Alfred who tries to get him to play soccer on the Wayne Manor lawn. But he only shakes his head and keeps working. Adults have jobs, and Bruce has to be an adult now.

That's why he tries to escape when the butler starts a pretend sword fight. Bruce doesn't pretend any more. But you can't get away when someone's going at you with a cane. Against his will, he's pulled into the fray.

He pushes; Alfred pushes back. Then he sees red, and he finds himself attacking files on his desk. It doesn't make sense to attack files; it makes sense to attack what makes you angry. He can't stop.

"I surrender!"

Alfred's voice silences his anger immediately. Bruce lowers his weapon, takes a deep breath, and smiles. It feels good, somehow, to be angry and then to stop being angry. There's reassurance in knowing the anger doesn't have to control him.

* * *

**I'd love to hear people's thoughts on this scene. I really liked it, but beyond that, I thought the progression of Bruce going a little over the edge, coming back, and then looking happier than we've seen him was really significant. **


	15. Intensity

**Intensity**

It's not as if intensity is a new quality in Bruce Wayne. Alfred has always seen it, and when the boy's parents were alive, he was thankful that they knew how to bring their child's lighter side to the surface. He used to stand outside the living room and watch Thomas Wayne wrestle his son to the ground, tickling him until Bruce's laughter echoed through the walls of the Manor. Martha, too, had had her way, though it was calmer. She could always, somehow, silence Bruce's propensity toward fear and anger with a touch or a word.

It has never been his responsibility to soothe the boy when his own mind threatens to get the better of him. Until now, when the darkness is darker than ever before.

Alfred thinks of his own childhood, but he was not like Bruce Wayne. He was never lost in his own mind, and he never wore the faraway look that claims the boy's face more and more often.

Children, he thinks, are meant to have fun, even if their lives have been turned upside down. It's unhealthy for his charge to move between his intense obsession with the files and the news reports and his determination to punish himself in the name of conquering fear.

Sometimes, Alfred dreams that he hears Bruce laughing, but he wakes to a silent house and a boy who, more often than not, is huddled in a low-lighted room looking at bloody photos on his computer.

That's why, one day, he picks up a cane and starts the silliest sword fight in history. Alfred may be duty bound to let Bruce have his way in some things, but fun is nonnegotiable. He pushes; Bruce pushes back.

That's when something shifts, and the little boy isn't playing any more. Alfred sees the intensity, the anger, the flash of something deep and painful.

"I surrender!"

To his surprise, the words shut down Bruce's anger like a lightswitch, and just like the sun after rain, a grin fills the little boy's face.

Alfred studies the child who has become his student, his ward, his accidental son. And he finally understands. Intensity is only frightening when you can't control it. When you find out that it's possible to be angry and to stop being angry, that's when you feel brave.

Seeing Bruce Wayne smile doesn't just make Alfred feel brave; it makes him feel like he can hold the world on his shoulders.


	16. Nightmares

**Nightmares**

"I had a bad dream."

"Was I in it?"

"Not this time."

Bruce smiles. It's not normal to smile after a nightmare. In the first days, he couldn't. He would lie alone in his bed and sob into his pillow, trying not to wake Alfred. His pain, he had felt, was his to bear, and no one else's.

But something changed, after that. Somewhere between quiet battles of will over food and files, sword fights, and hugs, he's begun to realize he's not alone.

His butler is no Martha Wayne, with her gentle hands and the sweet smell of perfume that always lingered around her. He's no Thomas Wayne, with his big laugh and endless patience. He's Alfred, with worry-lines etched in his face that Bruce has begun to realize are growing deeper because of him.

There's a hole in the boy's soul, but he's started to understand what most people aren't forced to realize until they're much older: Losing people, even those you love most, doesn't have to mean isolation.

Bruce's father once told him about people whose heart valves get blocked, but somehow, because of exercise and the amazing things the body does, their hearts manage to make new pathways, keeping them alive far longer than should be possible.

His heart feels that way, sometimes. Where there used to be pathways to love, security, and comfort, he now finds only anger and pain and loss. But there are new pathways, too, forged by the knowledge that no matter how much Alfred threatens, he will never fail to make him a meal, by the security of never having to face lawyers or cops without a protector, and most of all, by finding that he's never truly alone, either in body or mind, because the butler shares both his house and his pain.

It's not that Alfred knows how to make the nightmares go away, but knowing he cares enough to try?-that's enough to make Bruce smile.


	17. Smiles

**Smiles**

Most days, Bruce Wayne doesn't smile.

Alfred used to live to serve, to make sure everything in Wayne Manor ran so smoothly that Thomas and Martha never even had to give a second thought to the day-to-day workings of their home lives.

It's not that he's stopped caring about that, but since that ugly night, something else has become more important. _Someone _else.

When Bruce falls asleep on the sofa at midnight, Alfred is the one who gently shuts the lid of his laptop and closes all the files strewn around him on the floor. It's the butler who picks him up and carries him to bed, or, if he's too far gone, puts an afghan around him and leaves a low light on in case he should wake in the night.

It's Alfred who hears the screams. Usually, they come at about 2 a.m. That's when he gets up, puts on his robe, rubs his bleary eyes, and goes to the kitchen to make hot cocoa. The boy never talks about his nightmares, and he doesn't want to be touched or coddled. At those moments, he shuts into himself even more than usual. But night after night, he takes the mugs and sips the warm liquid inside, and as the butler watches, he calms down and settles back into bed. It's not perfect, but it's something.

He's not used to hearing screams in the daytime. That's why he rushes to Bruce's favorite room in the house. He's actually relieved when he realizes the boy was dreaming. Given the child's propensity for self-harm, he wouldn't have been surprised by much. But when he sees Bruce upright and unharmed, his heart rate starts to return to normal.

_Bad dream_. Of course it was a bad dream. Alfred would do anything he could to take those bad dreams in his hands and rip them to shreds, like someone tearing apart the picture of a lost lover. But no one can do that.

"Was I in it?"

"Not this time."

The boy smiles. It's like opening a Christmas Cracker and finding the best prize in the world.

Alfred used to live for schedules and tasks and duties done like clockwork, but Bruce Wayne is more complicated than the insides of the most complicated clock in the world.

Most days, he doesn't smile. Alfred lives for the days he does.


	18. The Protector

**The Protector**

_Alfred doesn't understand_ Bruce tells himself, as he pins another article to the wall. It's not that he doesn't hear everything the butler says to him; he likes to look as if he doesn't.

It's a defense mechanism. Alfred isn't Thomas or Martha Wayne, and the boy is trying to become acclimated to a world in which he no longer has anyone.

But it's complicated, because he doesn't want to be alone. Part of him is glad when his butler checks on him, scolds him, tries to pry. It's a human weakness, he feels, to rely on someone else, but he can't help it. Alfred isn't Thomas or Martha Wayne, but he's the one person who still cares.

Entering the Wayne Enterprises luncheon should be frightening, a little boy making his way through a sea of rich, successful adults, but it isn't, because Bruce isn't alone. He feels his butler's presence behind him—warm, solid, safe. He's not even frightened when the screams start, and everyone is running. Alfred shields him, and he knows he'll be all right. Nothing bad can happen to him when Alfred is near—nothing but a scolding, that is, and he doesn't mind those.

That night, he shows Alfred what he finds in his neverending files, and the butler shows an interest instead of complaining about his choice of hobbies. Bruce is glad he's there. It makes no sense to defend yourself against your very own protector.

* * *

**A/N: Short and sweet, but the next one is longer ;)**


	19. The Protected

Dedicated to wandamarie. Thanks for being a great reader!

**The Protected**

Alfred is frustrated, not that it's surprising. He spends most of his days with frustration of some sort. The young master wouldn't eat; then he wouldn't sleep; then he moved on to hurting himself in the name of "testing," but to Alfred, it all felt like self-punishment for a senseless act that had nothing to do with the little boy and everything to do with the deterioration of Gotham. Now it's the endless files, with their gruesome photos and whitewashed information that has undoubtedly passed through hand after hand, sanitizing official reports and making the truth into lies.

If he wasn't so attached to the boy, it would be easier. But there's no chance of that, not after years of living in the same house, changing diapers, giving rides to school. He's never had children of his own, but Bruce is entwined with him as tightly as if he belonged to him. And he does, now.

When he finds the child once more so ensconced in his files that he won't even look around, he restrains the impulse to yell; he's already realized that doesn't work on Bruce. He also doesn't touch him. The boy is only twelve, and there are moments when he needs to be touched, but woe betide the unsuspecting butler who miscalculates them. It's not that the boy fights or struggles; it's that he goes somewhere, deep into himself, and Alfred can't find him. That's far scarier than watching the boy calmly studying police reports, so he picks the lesser of evils and leaves the boy alone.

Later on, at a luncheon full of people Alfred despises, he stands proudly behind his young charge. It's not frustrating, for once, because he's doing his real job. His title is butler; his vocation is protector. When the crisis happens—how could there not be a crisis; it's Gotham, after all—he shields Bruce on instinct. He does not want to die. Not for himself; he faced death hundreds of times when he was a young Marine. But he doesn't want to leave Bruce alone. As much as the boy outwardly resists his influence, he knows how much the child desperately needs him. But if death awaits, he will save the boy with his last breath. No question.

At the end of the day, they're both alive and unharmed. Alfred drives back to Wayne Manor, but he can't resist looking in the mirror to the back seat, reminding himself that the boy is in one piece, sitting with as much quiet composure as ever while he reads something on cellular phone.

Woe betide the butler who miscalculates what Bruce Wayne needs, but when he opens the door for the child to let him out of the car, he risks a quick embrace. He can't help it. To his relief, it's returned, with interest. "Thank you, Alfred," says the boy, pulling back and walking to the house without looking back.

That night, the butler sits with his charge. He wouldn't admit it to a soul, but he can't bear not being with him, reassuring himself over and over that the child is whole and safe after the scare of the day. Bruce hands him something, a sheet of paper from one of his files. It's a flag of truce, perhaps, or even an invitation. The boy has finally found something, and he wants Alfred to be part of his discovery. That's even better than a hug.


	20. Detached

**Detached**

Bruce feels the eyes of his butler on his back, watching him as he pins another article to the wall. It's not an unfriendly gaze, but it feels threatening nonetheless.

It's not a physical threat; Alfred would die before he would hurt him, of that he's absolutely sure. And he would die to protect him.

But some threats are worse than physical. Burns are only skin deep, and cuts heal. He can't turn and meet Alfred's eyes because they contain an invitation he can't let himself accept.

Attachment is deeper than skin. It fuses brain and bone and heart, until the ripping apart is so painful it kills you inside, even while you're still walking around living. Bruce feels like everything inside him, everything that can't be seen, is irreparably broken, the jagged edges of a whole that once existed, the fusion of three people who bore the same name and blood and love.

He cannot let himself accept the butler's ever-extended invitation to attach, to fuse, to become something new together. To attach is to risk another breaking.

He knows what would happen if he broke again. His heart would crumble, like the doomed victims of Gotham's failed drug, collapsing on themselves like houses of cards. He cannot bear the thought.

To be alone is a slow death, but he deceives himself into believing that a slow death is better than the risk of losing again.

* * *

**A/N: Most chapters follow episodes directly, but after seeing a clip from "Spirit of the Goat," I wanted to write a couple of short chapters that bridge the gap from "Viper" to that episode. **


	21. Unfinished

**Unfinished**

Alfred presses the boy's clothes: khaki trousers, blue button-down, beige cabled sweater. The costume of a fully-grown man. But only a costume, because every piece is so unbelievably small, so slight under the iron, like a half-formed idea or an unfinished poem.

The butler shakes his head. He's not usually one for metaphors, except the boy himself is a metaphor these days, walking around the Manor like a half-finished symphony, jagged and discordant.

Alfred has always liked music, and the Waynes were like the harmony that made the minor-key reality of Gotham bearable. A man, a woman, a child—perfectly in unison. He didn't count himself part of their song, but he enjoyed listening to it.

He knows something of what the boy feels; his own parents are dead. But he was fully-formed when they died, not a half-finished thought with black hair and haunted brown eyes. He does not know what it's like to be incomplete and to lose what it is that promises to complete you—the people whose touch ensures that you will one day be a whole self.

Alfred has never been a father. He has never known what it is to bring someone into the world, unformed, with the responsibility of making what is unfinished into something complete. But he recognizes the boy's need when he sees it, the ache of a heart that is alone when it most needs connection to thrive.

The butler has always seen what needed to be done and done it, without a hesitation. That's why, day in and day out, he holds out an invitation to Bruce Wayne: to grab on, to cling, to accept the promise of guidance and to begin, together, the journey toward completeness.

Bruce averts his eyes, preoccupies himself, spends his mind on conspiracies. But every so often, Alfred feels the child's eyes on him, intense and longing, and he knows that, one day, neither of them will be alone any more.


	22. Substitute

**Substitute**

"Why would the Goat take me? There's no one to take me from."

He says it a little too quickly, but there's emotion in the phrase. It's not that he doesn't feel his butler's gaze on him or understand that he has somewhere to belong. It's the anger coming out, anger at a world that has stolen the people from him to whom he _wants _to belong.

He and Alfred live around each other, day in and day out, and Bruce is well aware that his butler wants more from him—more respect, more compliance, more permission to be part of his private world. But the boy can't bear to give it—any of it—because it would feel like a betrayal of Thomas and Martha Wayne. He is content to be friends with his butler, but he cannot bridge the gap that separates them—a few feet in a room and a few hundred miles of emotion.

Alfred wants him to sleep in bed; he doesn't. He's stopped climbing the roof, but he would do it again. In the moments before his mind finally shuts off, usually in the early hours of the morning, he feels rage bubbling up inside him. It's directed at different things, but one of them is the idea that someone can be a substitute father, can come in and replace what's missing in an instant. He's not angry at his butler; he's angry at the world that took Thomas Wayne and left Alfred. He wakes resigned.

Of course, it's Alfred who helps him with Algebra and sentence diagramming. It's Alfred who brings him a tray in the mid-afternoon when his stomach grumbles because he's forgotten to eat. And it's Alfred who runs when his nightmares get the better of him.

Bruce Wayne is sure he doesn't belong to anyone. Except—if Alfred was gone, he would lose his mind completely. There's no question about that.


	23. 13 Words

**13 Words**

"Why would the goat take me? There's no one to take me from."

Before Bruce Wayne's birth, Alfred had never realized how much the words of children can hurt those who are older than they are by decades. It seems as if it shouldn't work that way, as if something in the adult mind should guard against the feeling of being punched in the gut by 13 words said by a little boy.

It's not that the butler is hurt for himself—well, there's a bit of that. He wishes Bruce would turn around, look him in the eyes, and see how much he cares for him. But it's far more than that. The words of children are innocently revelatory of the failings of their elders. What sucker punches Alfred Pennyworth the most is the reality that the boy doesn't feel like he belongs, can't seem to see, or at least to accept, that when Alfred makes his tea and irons his shirts, he's trying to stabilize his world. That when he sits with him, looking through files, he's trying to connect, to share love that isn't overwhelming.

Alfred can't help blaming himself. He is no parent, and he's never had to be. But he's begun to understand why people with children have regrets, why they lose sleep wondering about the words they've used and their tones of voice, why their minds are endlessly occupied with a curious mixture of worry and joy.

After all, 13 words can pierce like a knife, but the fact that Alfred is the one who gets to hear them, to be the one to carry at least a portion of the boy's pain—that's where the joy comes in.


	24. Velveteen

**Velveteen**

"'_Does it hurt?__'__ asked the Rabbit._

'_Sometimes,__'__ said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. __'__When you are Real you don__'__t mind being hurt.__'_

'_Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,__'__ he asked, __'__or bit by bit?__'_

'_It doesn__'__t happen all at once,__'__ said the Skin Horse. __'__You become. It takes a long time. That__'__s why it doesn__'__t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don__'__t matter at all, because once you are Real you can__'__t be ugly, except to people who don__'__t understand.__'"_

Bruce is reading _The Velveteen Rabbit_. He hasn't read it in at least five years, but it was his mother's favorite book to read to him when he was a small boy, and so it had once been his favorite, too. "What does it mean?" he'd asked Martha, when he was old enough to realize that he didn't understand what the Skin Horse was talking about.

"Love," his mother had answered simply. He still hadn't understood, but he'd liked the way she'd said it, so he'd wrapped his tiny arms around her neck and curled up in her lap.

When he was a small boy, the book had never made him cry. Now, at twelve, he has to brush tears off the pages. He wants, more than anything, to talk to Martha again. He understands, now, what it means to love so hard you fall to pieces. What he still can't comprehend is how it's possible to love so much the pain is bearable.

He lets himself cry for a few minutes, closing the pages of the worn children's book and laying it on the sofa beside him before leaning back and closing his eyes. While he goes to sleep, he usually imagines his father's voice, reading him the _Morte d__'__Arthur _and stopping to explain the stories about the Knights of the Round Table.

This night, his memory belongs to his mother, and he imagines himself telling her what he never knew how to say. If being Real is about love, then she was the realest person he'd ever known.


	25. Becoming Real

**Becoming Real**

Alfred goes to Bruce's favorite room to check on the boy, and as usual, he finds him fully clothed and asleep on the sofa. The butler wants to be irritated, but he can't. He's just glad the boy is resting. He takes a throw blanket and puts it gently over the small, inert form, and as he does so, he sees the corner of a book next to Bruce's arm. Slowly and quietly, he picks it up.

It's _The Velveteen Rabbit._ Alfred can't remember the last time he read it, but he can guess what fascination it holds for his young charge. He well remembers hearing Martha Wayne read it to her son over and over.

He sits down opposite Bruce for a few minutes, watching the boy to make sure he doesn't wake with a nightmare. As he waits, he begins to flip through the book idly, remembering it from his own childhood, long past.

_Does it hurt?__'__ asked the Rabbit._

'_Sometimes,__'__ said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. __'__When you are Real you don__'__t mind being hurt.__'_

'_Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,__'__ he asked, __'__or bit by bit?__'_

'_It doesn__'__t happen all at once,__'__ said the Skin Horse. __'__You become. It takes a long time. That__'__s why it doesn__'__t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don__'__t matter at all, because once you are Real you can__'__t be ugly, except to people who don__'__t understand.__'"_

The butler remembers being enchanted by the passage, as a boy, but not knowing quite what it meant. Now, a feeling pierces him that is so sharp it has no business coming from a children's book. He shuts the slim volume and watches Bruce Wayne, and tears spring to his eyes.

He knows, now, what it means to be Real.

He knows what it is to have his dignity loved off, by a little boy who used to love to tackle him, jumping on his back until he feigned defeat. He knows how it feels to have all other purposes fall out of him, until all that's left is the desire to care for Bruce. And he knows what it is to feel loose in the joints and shabby in the heart.

"When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

That's the truth of it. That's what has him wiping his eyes with the back of his hand as he marks the slow, steady breathing of the little boy. It doesn't matter what Bruce says; he will love him. There is absolutely nothing, any more, that the child could do that he would not forgive.

Bruce doesn't understand. Not yet. There is still ugliness in his eyes. But, as Alfred rises and adjusts the afghan around the boy one more time, he smiles, because it doesn't matter at all. By loving Bruce Wayne, he's become Real.

* * *

**A/N: This chapter is a tribute to Margery Williams, who ****wrote _The Velveteen Rabbit_, which is, in my opinion, one of the most profound books ever written.**


	26. The Boy

**The Boy**

The boy who wants to be a man is dressed in pajamas and a robe. Gordon has never seen a kid who dresses so well, like something off that _Sherlock _show Barbara loves.

He has a man's intuition. He will read in your eyes what you don't say, and Gordon has never been good at hiding the truth from his eyes. Bruce knows he might be going to his death, though the cop would do anything to conceal that truth.

He's too honest. He's never been able to lie well. If he had been, he'd be making a lot more money in a lot nicer city than Gotham. But he can't lie to himself any more than he can lie to the boy.

He puts his hand out. It's an apology and a goodbye. Bruce wants to be treated like a man; Gordon offers a man's handshake.

But the cop has his own kind of intuition, and he sees the child in those eyes that so desperately want to have the strength of a man. Bruce doesn't yet realize that men are just boys who grow taller.

The handshake is refused. The boy is child enough to prefer an embrace. Or maybe he's man enough. Gordon isn't sure, because he's blinking back tears. The only person who embraces him is Barbara, and lately, her hugs have included a desperation that frightens him.

The boy's arms simply say, "Please don't go; please don't be another loss. But if you go, be brave." He's surprised by the strength in the child's arms. He will be a formidable man some day.

When he finally turns to leave, the last picture in Gordon's vision is that of the dutiful butler, standing behind the boy as he always does, solid and unmoving. He nods. The butler nods back.

The cop doesn't want to die, but he's comforted by the knowledge that Bruce will never be alone. He's too much of a child to be left alone and too much of a man to have less of a father than Alfred Pennyworth. They're strangely suited to each other, those two.

If he never returns to Wayne Manor, the arms of the boy will have something to hold. That thought warms him as he steps out into the cold.


	27. The Butler

**The Butler**

Butlers are not known for their ability to take out Major Crimes Unit detectives. Then again, Alfred Pennyworth isn't much like any butler in the movies James Gordon has seen. Oh, all the surface things are there; he's perfectly correct.

But there's more. A lot more. James Gordon was a soldier, and he knows one when he sees one. Fish Mooney once told him he had danger in him; he feels the same way about Pennyworth.

He finds it comforting. It means that no matter what happens to him, the boy with the haunted eyes and strangely adult way of speaking will be safe. And cared for.

Where there's danger, there's also love. James Gordon knows because he's always cared too easily, and he can see that same care in the eyes of the butler. Alfred Pennyworth is no ordinary domestic servant. He's a father in disguise, waiting for his son to realize how lucky he is, to turn around and embrace what's been given to him.

Instead, the boy chooses to embrace the cop, and Gordon holds him close, wishing he could give the affection back to Pennyworth, to whom it's due, and in turn to fill the boy's arms with the person who's never going to leave him.

But he can't, so he shares a nod of understanding with Pennyworth and comforts himself with the knowledge that the butler will still be there when the boy finally understands.


	28. Attachments

**Attachments**

Bruce does not want to lose James Gordon, and he doesn't quite know why. Somehow, the cop is fused with his memory of the Terrible Night, the one that will never leave his mind. He remembers the blond man with his bright blue eyes telling him that he would see light again, and he almost believed it. For a moment, James Gordon had been the only thing between him and despair.

He's always been intense in his attachments. It's something he doesn't particularly like about himself. For a few years, he's tried to hide how much he loves the people he loves, and since his parents' death, that desire has crystallized into a mission. Perhaps, he thinks, if he can convince the world he's detached, removed, and cold, he will convince himself.

But Gordon won't let him. Something about the man pulls out the child in Bruce, the boy who still wants to yell instead of acquiescing, to argue instead of accepting, to be held instead of shaking a hand. He cannot bear the idea of James Gordon dying. It would rip another hole in his shredded heart.

What he doesn't let himself think about is the one attachment that goes deeper. He cannot turn and look at his butler's face. He knows that it would wear an expression that is a mixture of concern and love, behind a mask of impassivity. It sometimes feels like a curse to be able to read Alfred's expressions as easily as he can.

He does not want to lose James Gordon, but he would die, he's pretty sure, if he lost Alfred. It doesn't bear thinking about, so he closes it off once again.


	29. The Mission

**The Mission**

Alfred offers his help. It's all he can do for the young cop hellbent on justice. He knows his offer won't be accepted. He has seen many soldiers with the look in their eyes that Gordon has now, soldiers going on missions from which they will likely not return.

He doesn't want to lose the young man, one of the only good men in a city of thieves. But James Gordon is not his mission.

His life belongs to the boy whose very desperation to be a man shows what a child he still is. He knows the feeling of Bruce's embrace, though he feels it rarely now. There is a closeness between them so painful it brings its own kind of distance.

It's good for the boy to be held, to feel that he's real and cared for in the arms of another person. Alfred would be those arms, but the boy is afraid of him.

No, he's not afraid of the man's anger, or his displeasure, or his stiffness. They are far beyond that now. He's afraid of his own inability to escape loving and being loved. To touch the butler now is worse pain than burning his hand on a candle, because it forces him to realize that he cannot stop caring. Alfred has sensed this, and now he knows it. The vehemence of the boy's embrace of the cop doesn't only belong to James Gordon; it also belongs to him.

There are days when the butler doesn't enjoy his job, days when he wishes Bruce could be three years old again, when he could cure the child's moods with toast and a few minutes in his lap. But he would never think of abandoning his post. When you love something as much as he loves the boy, no pain is too severe.

James Gordon nods to him before he leaves the house, and Alfred knows they understand each other. They are both men who know what it is to have a mission that cannot afford to fail.


	30. Data

**Data**

Bruce Wayne loves data. He knows a million reasons homeschooling works (carefully failing to mention to Alfred that most successful homeschoolers get together with other children on a regular basis—irrelevant, surely). He can also use data to decimate any argument for why it's a good idea to be a normal kid. His brain is wired for data. He reads, and he remembers.

He has known Alfred Pennyworth for twelve years, all twelve of the years he's been on earth. Plenty of time to gather all relevant data. He knows what every expression on the butler's face means, and every tone of his voice.

There has been no power struggle since his parents died. Alfred has left Bruce in control, and the boy knows it. Sure, the butler has yelled a few times, strongly suggested therapy or bedtime or dinner. But the boy who has the data knows there was no steel behind the orders.

Until Monday morning, on the steps of Bruce's school. He'd agreed to come, because he'd thought he could talk Alfred out of leaving him. He'd always been able to get his way before.

Not this time. This time, he tries to argue his way out, and Alfred's tone changes. For the first time since he's been alone with his butler, the boy knows the man means what he says. Bruce could run, or refuse, or do something else to get out of it. But he doesn't want to. There's something curiously satisfying about trying to push and meeting a steel wall.

The boy's world has been in flux for a long time. Alfred is not his father or his mother. But he's far more than a butler. As much as Bruce wants to be a man, something in him is dead tired of being in charge.

The boy has data on himself, too. Data on anger that won't go away, fear that dogs him at night, flashbacks he can't turn off. It's enough to try to survive, to use his obsession with research to quench a little bit of the fire. Something deep in him knows that it's too much to call the shots, too.

So he turns and walks toward the door of a school he doesn't want to go to, full of kids he doesn't care to see. But as he holds his leather briefcase close, he feels curiously shielded, as if he's wearing a fur-lined overcoat over his jacket.

There's a new piece of data that he's learning by the day: It's all right to let someone else be in charge, as long as it's someone you can trust.

* * *

A/N: It's probably going to take a few chapters to unpack everything in "The Mask," which was an outstanding episode in general, but also gave us phenomenal Alfred/Bruce moments.


	31. Orders

**Orders**

Alfred looks in his bathroom mirror and imagines that he's in the middle of the desert, commanding a platoon of Marines. The key, his commanding officer had always said, was not to show any kind of uncertainty. "Lock eyes with 'em, Pennyworth," he'd bark. "If you look like you're sure they'll obey you, they will. Certainty. It's all about certainty."

He'd been a young man then, but it had worked.

Now he was old man, or, at least, he often felt like one. And he was well aware that guiding one little boy could be far more complicated than commanding a whole platoon of Marines.

He's surprised by how little Bruce resists getting into the car and driving across town. It's unsettling. He'd expected a showdown, some kind of battle of wills. Deep down, he's known they'd have to come to one some time. For all his promising to let Bruce go his own way, he's come to realize that twelve-year-old boys don't make the best parents for themselves. And he has a sneaking suspicion Bruce doesn't think so either, for all his unwillingness to show it. They've been living around each other for too long. He does not know how to be a father, but at least he knows how to be an adult, something the boy is still a few years from learning.

He'd rather not pitch battle on the steps of Gotham's finest preparatory school. But that doesn't mean he won't.

Bruce is stalling. Alfred hasn't been his butler for twelve years for nothing. He knows what fear looks like on the little boy. Since the night of the murders, he's let the kid win these kinds of fights, not deeming it worth time and effort to set a flag down on a territory that doesn't really matter. But this matters. Behind his resolve is the assurance that Thomas and Martha Wayne would want their son in school, back in the world, learning to live with the people he'll someday have to lead.

"Certainty. It's all about certainty."

He locks eyes with his charge, trying to project all the confidence he can find in himself. "You're going to bloody school. Start walking." He has a split second of terror that he forces himself not to show. Truthfully, he doesn't know what he's going to do if Bruce refuses.

The boy starts toward the door, and the butler allows himself a relieved sigh. He's still got it. At least, he's got it when it comes to Bruce Wayne.

Alfred is not a father, but he can't help feeling a feeling that is very different from anything he'd ever felt when a group of privates had done his bidding. There's something like comfort in knowing that the boy trusts him enough—perhaps not perfectly—but enough to do as he says.

He showed no uncertainty to Bruce Wayne. He lets himself show it now. When you're a soldier, you take and give orders the way you breathe air. It's neither your call nor your responsibility to decide what those orders are. When you're a guardian, though, it's different. The feeling of being absolutely responsible for someone else's well-being makes every order the most important thing in the world. He hopes to goodness he's made the right choice for the boy.


	32. Logic

**Logic**

Bruce Wayne received a logic book from his father for his eighth birthday. It was his favorite gift. Day after day, he would pore over the puzzles inside it until he could solve every single one. A couple of years later, his mother followed up with a book about formal logic. He didn't understand a lot of it, but he was fascinated by the sheer beauty he saw in the symbols and the forms. Logic spoke the language inside the boy. It was orderly, perfect, safe. As he grew, Bruce began to learn that Gotham was not a logical place. The night his parents died was the most absurd of his life. It had no place in his orderly world.

The day the boy returns to school, he learns that bullies cannot be handled with logic. At first, it's not just anger he feels. It's confusion. Logic makes sense; Tommy Elliot does not make sense. There is nothing logical about unkindness. He makes the mistake of revealing that he doesn't understand. He is met with sneers.

It's not being hit that he minds. Physical pain is not terribly important when you feel like a disembodied mind. It's the stupidity of it all, the vicious savagery of senseless cruelty. The world is supposed to make sense. Bullying is a logical fallacy come to life.

He cannot think of a solution, and he does not want to tell his butler. He does not like to appear weak.

But Alfred doesn't make sense either. He is the one presence in Bruce's world that will never budge, not when he's ignored, set aside, distrusted, or disobeyed. It would be logical, Bruce thinks, for Alfred to leave him to his own devices, to work out his own problems. He's given the man enough grief to make that reasonable.

But the butler makes no more logical sense than the bully. He holds Bruce's lapel, and the boy sees fire—protective fire—in his eyes. There is nothing like dismissal or uncaring on his face. It's almost as if—as if the bullies had hit him instead of Bruce.

The boy does not understand Alfred any better than he understands Tommy Elliot, but as he takes his seat in the back of the car and calms his breathing and his heart rate, a thought occurs to him: If there are bullies in the world, it's a good thing there are Alfred Pennyworths in the world, too. It's not a logical thought, but it nearly makes him smile in spite of everything.

* * *

A/N: Hi there, personal experience. I was bullied horrendously at Bruce's age. I remember a particular incident in which I did something very similar to what Bruce did in the scene with Tommy—I tried to use verbal reasoning to deal with preteen bullies. You can imagine how well that went. I feel you, Babybat. Sadly (or perhaps fortunately, depending on your perspective) I had no Alfred in my life, and the unresolved anger I felt lasted for many years and led to a lot of nastiness. Let's just say, I get it.


	33. Fire

**Fire**

Alfred Pennyworth does not like bullies.

He especially does not like them when they touch even a hair on the head of the person he loves most in the world.

There are moral quandaries, and there are moral certainties. The butler takes Thomas Wayne's Rolex out of the Wayne Manor safe. The boy should have it anyway. All the better for it to be put to good use.

He would fight for his charge, but it will be better for him to have the satisfaction of defending his own family's honor. Nevertheless, Alfred will watch. He will not let Bruce be harmed. But he isn't worried. There is fire in the boy.

His question, "Not at all?" was a pointed one. Not for one moment does he believe Bruce failed to hurt Tommy Elliot in their first encounter. The boy needs practice and direction, but he's far from helpless. The intensity that has frustrated the butler in recent days is a gift, Alfred finally realizes.

He has often wondered how to bond with Bruce Wayne, how to gain new access to the boy's soul. Sometimes, he's felt so different from the child it has seemed as if they're from different planets.

Not any more. There is anger in the boy's eyes that Alfred fully comprehends. They are not so different after all.


	34. Resolve

**Resolve**

Bruce Wayne clutches a Rolex watch. The cold metal reminds him of all the times, when he was small, that he would sit on Thomas Wayne's knee while his father's low voice told him stories about Sir Gawain and The Goose Girl and the Brave Tailor. Thomas's arm around his middle had always seemed immense, stronger than anything in the world. Bruce concentrated better when he had something in his hands, so his father would always take off his large silver watch and let the little boy fiddle with it while he lulled him into drowsiness.

This day, he focuses on the feeling of that huge arm around him, solid and safe. He wishes he could feel it now, could bury himself in his father's protection. But today is his day, his time to avenge his family's honor. He closes his eyes and clamps his fingers around the watch, imagining his fist connecting with Tommy Elliot's face.

He is not afraid; he is resolute. There's something comforting about that. He has tried to conquer fear, but when it comes to the bully, fear is nowhere to be found. There is only resolve.

He rings the doorbell, and his mind shifts into pure instinct. The feeling of smashing knuckles against cheek is even more satisfying than he expected. He repeats the motion again, and then again. Power surges through him like a drug.

"Master Bruce!" Just as Alfred's voice calmed his anger during their sword fight in Wayne Manor, it shuts down his rage now. He steps back, but the butler's face is not disapproving.

"I let him try." Those four words are the best thing Bruce Wayne has heard for a long time. Approval and authority. Authority and approval. A hand held out to keep him safe. The butler will not let him fall into the black abyss of his rage, the frightening place inside him that he's sometimes terrified will swallow him whole.

"Thank you, Alfred," says the boy as he passes his butler to get into the backseat of the car. The older man puts two large hands on his shoulders, squeezing lightly.

"You're welcome, Master Bruce." It's not like being held by Thomas Wayne, but it's comforting nonetheless. Bruce clamps the watch around his wrist. It's too large, but he'll grow into it.


	35. Singular

**Singular**

Alfred is proud.

When you're a butler, you can be proud in an indirect way. There's a long-standing tradition of English butlers taking ownership of "their" families. But it's not the same as being _part _of the family. He's always taken pride in Bruce's accomplishments—the school projects well done, the meticulously-completed logic puzzles he leaves lying around, the flashes of unusual maturity he displays. But it was Thomas and Martha Wayne who were responsible for shaping and guiding the boy, and most of the pride rightfully belonged to them.

It's different now. As he walks side-by-side with his ward, back to the waiting car, he feels a surge of pride that belongs to him alone. Of course, Bruce will always bear the DNA of his parents in both body and soul, but his present belongs to Alfred.

They are singular together, the hard-edged weapon of a butler with a flinty exterior that conceals a gentle soul he shows to few, and the delicately-featured, thoughtful boy with his deep wells of anger and determination.

Alfred would never have desired the responsibility he now has, and he would never have wished the boy such pain. Nevertheless, as the days have passed, he has come to understand his place. He is no longer a butler standing in the offing while the life of the Waynes unfolds around him. He cannot afford to stand aloof. Bruce needs him too much. And—if he's honest with himself, he loves the boy too much.

The butler had thought he could not love Bruce Wayne more. He now knows what all parents know—that when it comes to children, love is an infinite thing, piling on itself and increasing exponentially by the day until you drown in its depths, never to recover.

He puts his hands on the boy's shoulders and feels him relax. He is proud of the courage that carried his ward to Tommy Elliot's door, and he is proud of the resolve that connected fist with face. But that pride is nothing to the satisfaction he feels at the realization that his words can calm Bruce Wayne's rage and that his hands can soothe his agitation.

They are a pair of singulars, the boy and the man. He teaches the boy to live; the boy teaches him to love. Alfred feels like the lucky one.


	36. Alfred

**Alfred**

Bruce sits in the Wayne Manor kitchen with his sleeves rolled up, a Jerry's Pizza box in front of him on the table. He scarfs his third piece of Pepperoni and Olive, feeling calmer than he has in a long time.

When his parents were alive, he ate every meal with them in the dining room. Now that he and Alfred are alone, the butler brings him a tray wherever he is, and when he comes to the dining wing, they eat together in the kitchen.

"Give yourself time to chew, Master Bruce," says Alfred, who sits across from him at the small kitchen table, smiling.

"Thank you for your help today, Alfred," says Bruce quickly, feeling like he hasn't adequately expressed his gratitude. His parents were big on gratitude.

He looks up from his pizza and catches the butler's eye. Alfred nods and holds his gaze for a moment. He knows then that the older man understands. That's the nice thing about Alfred Pennyworth. He always knows what things mean—what Bruce means—without the boy having to say the things he can't seem to express. He knows when argumentativeness really means fear, when working into the night masks the dread of inescapable nightmares, and when shutting himself off really means he wants desperately to connect.

That's why the boy can say a simple thank you and know that his butler understand that it covers more than an afternoon at Tommy Elliot's house. He is only twelve, but he knows he's taken Alfred for granted. Somewhere between the butler studying his bruised face and their arrival back at the Manor, the truth had hit him with more impact than the bullies' fists.

_Why did he stay with me? _the boy had wondered, and as usual, his brain had begun its logical march toward a conclusion. Alfred wouldn't have had to stay. He was an employee of Thomas and Martha Wayne. He could have packed his black leather traveling cases and gone back to England or gotten another job with a wealthy family. He could have left Bruce behind, and no one would have blamed him.

The boy had sat in the back of the car and felt the full weight of his butler's sacrifice dawn on him like a thunderclap. He'd refused meals, scared the man the death by hurting himself in every conceivable way, and refused to cooperate with anything he'd suggested. Bruce Wayne was not stupid. The moment he'd seen Alfred's side of things, he'd felt guilt to almost rival the guilt he felt over the night of his parents' murder.

But Bruce's mind didn't hold memories for nothing. Other mental pictures came into sharp relief, the memory of strong arms holding him in the middle of a Gotham alleyway, of being half-awake and feeling the comfort of a thick down comforter wrapped gently around his sleeping form, of burning himself and and then feeling his fear evaporate in Alfred's arms.

It was obvious, he'd finally realized, why Alfred had stayed, and the realization was almost overwhelming to his still-raw emotions. Only someone who—who felt the way Alfred did would have cared so much about the bruise on his chin and taken him to Tommy Elliot's house. Only someone who—loved him that much would have driven him home to Wayne Manor and never even thought of leaving.

"Are you all right, Master Bruce?"Alfred's voice pulls him from the memory of his afternoon realization, and he looks down and sees that he's holding a slice of pizza in midair without eating it.

"I'm fine," he answers, this time catching his butler's eye on purpose and smiling. He doesn't have to say anything else. Alfred understands. That's what makes him Alfred.


	37. Bruce

**Bruce**

Alfred can make pizza. In fact, he remembers with pride the night Martha Wayne had made her way to the kitchen just to tell him that his Capicola and Parmesan was the best pizza she'd ever eaten.

But little boys who have just vanquished bullies do not want artisanal works of flatbread art. They want hot, over-cheesed, commercially-prepared slices of Pepperoni sludge. Alfred is no idiot. He happily drives to Jerry's Pizza and picks up two boxes of the overpriced stuff, no doubt prepared by half-asleep teenagers in unsanitary conditions.

"Thank you, Alfred," says the boy, when he sees where they're headed.

"You're welcome, Master Bruce," Alfred answers, mentally tallying that this is the second thank you he's received in one day. A bit strange for his quiet charge. Nothing is every straightforward with the boy. It's always about reading the signals and trying to understand what they mean. Not that he's bad at it, after twelve years. He just has to concentrate.

"Thank you, Alfred." Number three is when he hands his ward a plate and a paper towel and opens a box of steaming Pepperoni and Olive in front of him. A less experienced man might think the boy was just grateful for the pizza, but Alfred is very, very experienced when it comes to Bruce Wayne.

"You're welcome, Master Bruce." It won't do to betray his suspicions that something else is lurking below the surface. That would just send the boy scurrying back into his shell like a startled turtle.

Bruce is silent for a while after that, eating pizza like it's the last chance he'll ever have. The butler doesn't blame him. He knows how it feels to come down from a well-won fight—the adrenaline slowly fades, leaving calm satisfaction and a drained feeling in its wake that is best treated with superfluous amounts of carbohydrates and protein.

"Give yourself time to chew, Master Bruce." He just wants to engage the boy, to try a little bit of gentle prodding to see if he can get to what's behind the mask.

"Thank you for your help today, Alfred." Finally, Bruce looks up, and Alfred takes the opportunity to lock eyes with him and read his expression. Thanks number four, and he gets it. The words say gratitude, but the eyes hold an apology. It wouldn't be like Bruce Wayne to be simple.

Neither of them are much for talking things out, but the butler understands. Four thank-yous for a hundred different things, four thank-yous that contain just as many sorrys. He looks down and clears his throat. Appreciation is an overwhelming thing to take, especially when it contains the kind of love that Bruce's face can't hide.

That night, Bruce asks a question. "Alfred, can you teach me how to fight?" No one on earth could pay the butler enough to miss that opportunity.

"Yes, Master Bruce, I can."


	38. Lairy

**Lairy**

"But you watch her. She's a lairy one."

Bruce knows what Alfred means. Being around his English butler for twelve years has given him a vocabulary of British slang to rival a central London cabdriver.

Lairy means a lot of things—brash, aggressive, untrustworthy.

But he likes Selina Kyle. He can't help it. She's everything he isn't—confident, sure-footed, streetwise. And pretty.

She's not pretty like the women in the pictures in the Gotham Art Gallery, where his parents used to take him to look at the paintings and sculptures. Those women had calm, dead-looking eyes and pasted-on smiles.

Selina is too alive for that. She says they call her Cat. He thinks it fits. After all, cats are beautiful too, in a cunning, sharp, piercing kind of way.

Selina is like an east wind when you don't have a sweater. At first, its iciness pierces you with what feels like pain, but when you breathe it in and let yourself go, you realize it's made you that much more alive.

It's not that he disagrees with Alfred; she is lairy. But when he's around her, he feels like he's coming back to life.


	39. Louise

**Louise**

Alfred remembers his first crush. She was a girl called Louise, who lived three doors down. She had red hair, freckles, and a limp. He used to punch anyone who was rude to her. He's always been a protector.

It's not until he sees the boy's face when he's looking at the Cat-girl that he understands. He knows that bewilderment, that smile, that utter inability to know what to do or say. Boys, and men, are always rendered at least a little bit helpless in front of women they fancy.

But why does it have to be Selina Kyle, a lairy street waif? Louise had not been lairy.

Except, that's entirely a lie, and Alfred knows it. He remembers well the day she'd incited him to climb over Mrs. Dowland's fence for forbidden apples and the day she'd convinced him to skip school and go with her on an adventure through the seedy alleyways of their city. Both times, he'd been caned. Both times, he'd thought it was worth it.

Men are ordinary, the butler feels, like he is—dutiful, hardworking, solid. Women are mercurial and beautiful. And, when it's the right one, irresistible.

"Know about girls, do you, Alfred?"

He does know, but the boy will have to find out for himself. That's how it is for men. Somehow, girls are born knowing. Perhaps it's because they're lairy.


	40. Girls

**Girls**

It's the thing Bruce dreads most, the idea that someone else knows the thing that eats him up at night and keeps him from sleeping until the nightmares come. No one blames him, but no one else was there, not even Alfred. The butler says it was not his fault, but he did not see Bruce's terror. No one did.

No one except Selina Kyle.

She saw, and that means she knows his shame. That's why she can never care for him, not a strong, fearless, beautiful girl. She would have done something that night. She would not have frozen in fear.

Half of him does not want to talk about that night; the other half cannot bear to be silent. After all, Selina is the only one bound to him in shared experience—the only one other than the man with the gun.

He hesitates, but he finally asks, leaving the question in the air like a missile, waiting for the girl to throw it back at him and leave him bleeding. No amount of burns or cuts can equal the shame he feels.

But when she speaks, it's like someone unlocking a jail cell and letting him go. She saw, but she doesn't blame. He's not sure he can stop blaming himself, but he feels lighter than he has in ages.

When night falls, Selina disappears into her guest room, and Bruce goes to the kitchen for a cup of tea. He finds his butler in shirtsleeves, sitting at the table looking through bills and bank books. "Can I get you something, Master Bruce?" Alfred might balk at cooking for the girl, but he never denies the boy a request.

"No, it's ok. Just tea," says Bruce, going to the cupboard and finding an Earl Grey teabag. "Do you want one?"

The butler gets up, closing his computer and setting aside his paperwork. "Have a seat." He takes the bag from Bruce's hand. The boy does as he says, settling into a kitchen chair and watching as Alfred goes through the routine of heating water and preparing the warm brew. He finds it comforting, like he always has.

"Alfred," he ventures, "I don't understand girls." He hears a low, rumbling laugh in return.

"My Old Son," says the butler, turning around, "you may be a brilliant lad, but some things are so far beyond us humble men that they're not worth worrying about." Bruce takes a steaming teacup from him and smiles.

He may not understand Selina Kyle, but liking her is a completely different thing.


	41. Laughter

**Laughter**

Alfred hears unrestrained laughter.

Since the terrible night, that kind of mirth has existed only in his dreams and his memories. He has forced himself to recall, over and over, the sound of the boy laughing as he danced his mother through the hallways of the house or tried to evade his father's affectionate grasp. Bruce's joy used to be the background to life in Wayne Manor, the soundtrack that made each day worthwhile.

He cannot afford to forget, or he's afraid he'll lose his mind.

It's not that the boy was ever without seriousness. He's always been given to silence and thought and analysis. It's just that, in the past, the darkness had always been balanced by light. Not any more.

The butler stops in his tracks and retraces his steps, wondering if he's imagining things, but when he approaches the sitting room, he's confronted by something he can hardly believe.

Bruce is laughing, playing, acting like a child.

He does not care about the crumbs on the sofa or the table or the jam stains on the rug. He watches and he listens, storing the happiness in his mind so he'll never forget it.

The girl is cheeky and lairy and goes against every rule-loving bone in Alfred's body. But she makes the boy laugh, and that is enough to burn her into the butler's heart forever.


	42. Nighttime

**Nighttime**

Bruce is sitting on the bed in his parents' bedroom. It's the first time he's entered it since the horrible night. He's not sure why he felt like going there. Maybe it's because Selina Kyle is in the house. He hasn't been around a girl for a very long time, and she makes him think of his mother, though she's nothing like Martha Wayne.

Alfred has left the room as it was, and the boy smells his mother's perfume all around him. It's as if she's been there in the past day or the past hour, rather than gone for days and weeks and months. He reaches out his hand, but all he touches is air.

The closet door is cracked open, and Bruce sees his father's suits, standing in rows, as if they're waiting for their owner to return. The boy wants to touch them, but touching would be too much, too real.

He sees the half-light turn to darkness out the windows, and the room is no longer illuminated save by a single lamp by the door. Bruce feels like he's in a dream, as if a wish could bring back the people the room is meant to contain.

The boy leans back onto the brocade coverlet and takes one of his mother's pillows in his arms, holding it against him. He closes his eyes and breathes in the scent he misses most.

Rest turns to disorientation as Bruce is jogged awake by the feeling of his head jostling against something that feels nothing like a pillow. As his senses return, he realizes he's being carried over someone's shoulder—his butler's, of course. He's too old to be carried, but Alfred doesn't mind that.

In the daytime, the boy tries his best to be older, stronger, as much of a man as he can manage. At night, he can't help being a child. He closes his eyes tightly and remains limp, not wanting to lose the comfort Alfred provides.

Two corridors later, Bruce finds himself placed gently into bed, with his mother's pillow under his head and his favorite quilt around him.

"Faker," whispers a low voice near his ear. He's left with a smile on his face and the feeling of a calloused hand brushing his forehead.


	43. Worthwhile

**Worthwhile**

Bruce Wayne isn't usually that hard to find. For the past several weeks, he's been hunkered down in his favorite sitting room, the one the Wayne family used to use for their evenings together, evenings filled with talking and laughing and playing games. The boy has turned it into a command center, of sorts, with scraps of paper on the wall and files littering the table. It's strangely symbolic, Alfred thinks, of what the boy has tried to do to himself—to take all the fun-loving, boyish tendencies and turn them into adult responsibility and solemnity.

This night, however, the butler can't find him. His first thought is the lairy girl, but a walk past her guestroom reveals a light on under the door and the sound of water draining into the tub in her bathroom, accompanied by the noise of feet sloshing moisture onto the tile floor. She's taken care of and contained, for the moment.

As Alfred looks through the house, his concern grows. It's been a while since the boy has actually injured himself; it seems as if boxing has, at least temporarily, relieved some of his compulsion toward self-harm. But the possibility is never far from the butler's mind.

The last wing Alfred tries is the one he rarely visits, the one containing the adult Waynes' bedroom and home offices. He goes in once in a while, long enough to wipe away dust, but he does little else. Bruce has given him no instructions about going through his parents' things, and the butler believes that some things should be left to the boy's discretion.

He looks into dark rooms containing sofas and computers, but he does not find the boy until he reaches the end of the hall and peeks into the bedroom of Thomas and Martha Wayne. Even now, when they've been gone for months, he feels strange stepping into it, as if he's invading a private world he's not meant to inhabit. He'd always felt strange about cleaning it, even though its owners had never minded.

Bruce is there, curled up on his parents' bed like he's all of three years old, holding a pillow and wearing an expression so peaceful it almost startles the butler. This is one time no nightmares have come to mar the child's sleep; he can tell.

Alfred stands silently, watching and thinking. He does not want to disturb the boy, but he is well aware of what grief can do to the mind in the middle of the night. If Bruce wakes up in his parents' room, his peace may well turn to terror. Better if he awakens in his own room, with his own things around him.

As gently as he can, the butler picks up the sleeping child and arranges him over his shoulder. It's a good thing, he thinks, that Bruce is slight. Before he turns off the lamp, he picks up the pillow the boy was holding. Perhaps it will comfort him to wake up and find it close by.

It's not long before Alfred feels the child's limp body stir slightly, and he knows that Bruce is awake. The boy doesn't speak, so he doesn't either. He simply tightens his hold and carries the boy to bed, just as he's always done.

In the daytime, they are butler and master, teacher and pupil, guardian and charge. It's in the night that Alfred feels like a father and lets himself hope that Bruce feels like a son. "Faker," he whispers, brushing the hair off the boy's forehead.

Often, days with Bruce are long and contentious. When night comes, however, it all feels more than worthwhile.


	44. Denial, Part I

_Elizabeth Kubler-Ross identified five stages of grief. The first one is denial._

**Denial, Part I**

Bruce is running, leading the Cat-girl through his house, faster than he's ever run before. She scampers away so fast it's like she has wings. He hesitates. Something pulls him back to the Manor like a magnet, even though he knows he should follow Selina and run for his life.

Alfred.

Bruce's mind is going a mile a minute. It hasn't always been this way. In the first days after the horrible night, he hardly spoke to his butler, if he could help it. Somehow, it felt like acknowledging Alfred's new role in his life would mean he was accepting his parents' fate, agreeing that they were gone, letting them be dead. Acting like Alfred didn't exist was his way of trying to preserve his world as it had been.

The boy follows Selina with the command to run ringing in his ears. He wouldn't go if the butler hadn't ordered him.

His parents had always been his authority; Alfred had been quietly supportive. Things changed as soon as the bodies of Thomas and Martha Wayne fell to the asphalt. The butler became the rule-maker. In the early days, he'd ignored Alfred's orders. It wasn't that Bruce minded his rules; it was the change he resisted, the admission that nothing would ever be the same.

Leaving the Wayne Manor grounds feels like betrayal. Bruce feels tears sting his eyes, but he keeps going.

At first, he'd tried to tell himself that Alfred didn't matter. That was before he realized that his butler mattered most of all. Resisting change was like standing on the bannister of the Wayne Manor staircase, caught between falling and solid ground. You can only balance for so long before you have to make a decision which way you're going to go. He was afraid that finally turning toward Alfred, letting him in, would feel like falling into an unknown abyss. Instead, it felt like stepping onto solid earth and having something rock-solid to hold onto. He'd never been so surprised in his life.

Bruce turns and takes one last look at his house, and he feels the truth like a bullet through the heart: Alfred Pennyworth is the most important person in his world.


	45. Denial, part II

_E__lizabeth Kubler-Ross identified five stages of grief. The first one is denial._

**Denial, Part II**

Alfred's instinct takes over the moment he understand's the bloodied woman's true intentions. He punches, kicks, wrestles, anything to buy time for the children on the floor above him.

Instinct was what carried him through the first days after the Wayne murders. The boy barely spoke to him, and he barely spoke to the boy. He had been a butler for many years, but he began to feel circumstances pulling him toward something else, a new role he'd never planned to inhabit. Thomas and Martha had put him in their will; he'd seen it as kind recognition of his role in their son's life. He'd never expected tragedy to make their promise a reality.

The butler screams Bruce's name, as if his voice will carry miles. He doesn't expect to be heard, but he can't help trying.

For a while, after the night that changed everything, he'd told himself that being ignored by the boy didn't matter. He was just a butler, and Bruce was his employer. After all, hadn't Thomas Wayne's will insisted that his son be allowed to go his own way? But it never worked. He could feel the child's pain like it was his own, the need for something more than a servant. And he wanted to be more, so desperately that when he finally let himself feel it, his desire almost frightened him.

Two police officers are stopped in their tracks by the tone of Alfred's voice. He only has one mission: to find Bruce Wayne and bring the boy back alive and safe. The butler is not just worried for his ward's life; he can't bear to imagine the fear coursing through his vulnerable child's veins. The boy has been through too much; he does not deserve more.

When Thomas and Martha Wayne were alive, Alfred had always admired the way they'd protected their only child, sheltering him from the worst horrors of their ever-crumbling city while opening his eyes to the good he might someday do. After their deaths, he was as committed to Bruce's physical safety as he'd ever been, but he hadn't understood how to protect the fragile emotions of a child whose complicated personality he struggled to comprehend. He'd shied away from that part of the task, but the boy had no one else to perform it. Alfred had finally taken up the duty as he did everything—with determination and perseverance. He expected to be rebuffed and pushed away, but instead he found that underneath Bruce's cool exterior, there was still a little boy who simply wanted to feel safe.

Alfred leaves the Manor without a look back. He will not come back until his mission is fulfilled. He will save Bruce Wayne or die trying. The boy is everything to him.


	46. Anger, Part I

_Elizabeth Kubler-Ross identified five stages of grief. The second is anger._

**Anger, Part I**

Bruce follows the girl through the streets and into a place that's like nothing he's ever seen. He's confused, but he trusts her—for the moment. She is the one who knows how to navigate this new world.

He does not trust easily. He remembers Jim Gordon, that long-ago day, reminding him that he had someone to care for him. At the time, he did not want to trust Alfred. Of course, he had always trusted the man to be a butler and something like an uncle, but he did not want to go further, to learn another person and accept that person into a part of his heart that felt irrevocably broken. He was too angry then, and a great deal of that anger had spilled over onto Alfred.

Ivy Pepper has wide, haunted eyes and long, red hair. The boy recognizes his own pain in her, so he cannot be unkind. She's only a child, and he knows what it is to be a child and lose everything.

He did not always want to be a child. Part of him still doesn't. In the first days and weeks, what had made him angriest was Alfred's insistence on treating him like a little boy. He did not want to play, but the butler had forced him—until his anger bubbled up and came out at the end of a cane. He learned that day that sometimes, playing hard could be a way to release some of the anger threatening to eat him alive.

He looks different now, dressed in an outfit from places he's never been. He wonders who owned it before him, whose life story he's wearing.

His own life story is one of pain and anger, but there's more than that. He remembers his mother explaining Graham Greene to him when he'd seen a book called _The End of the Affair _in her hands. "You can't be angry with someone without believing in them, Bruce," she'd said. "That's what this book is about." He hadn't understood then, but in the weeks after her death, he came to understand very well. His every attempt to rebuff Alfred, to keep the man at arms' length and act as if he needed no one at all, was stymied by his own intense feelings toward the butler, a mixture of anger and longing and need that he tried desperately to hide until it burst out of him because he could not contain it any more. Alfred was too real to him to ever be less than family.

Bruce feels nothing but concern when he thinks of his butler. Selina wants to disappear, and he follows, but all he can think of is the impossible possibility that Alfred could be gone. He has plenty of anger, but it's no longer directed toward the man who is his whole world. It's turned straight toward anyone who would dare to hurt Alfred Pennyworth.


	47. Anger, Part II

_Elizabeth Kubler-Ross identified five stages of grief. The second is anger. _

**Anger, Part II**

Alfred is furious. He can't even remember the last time he was so angry. Well, that's not entirely true, he remembers ruefully.

The day he found Bruce Wayne with a burn in the middle of his hand awakened anger so vehement it shook him to his core and blazed white-hot for a few seconds, until he saw the boy's terrified face. That's how it was at the beginning. He was as angry as Bruce, though the anger was not at his charge. He hated himself for the times he'd let it touch the boy. Those first weeks taught him the power of anger as he'd never understood it before—a terrible, wounding power that could extinguish the flickering light in the boy's eyes like a guttering candle. He was far from perfect, but after he finished holding Bruce and bandaging his burn, he vowed that his anger, however vehemently it chose to burn, would not touch his child. The boy was too precious.

The butler allows his fury to sharpen his mind. He's been a soldier, and he knows that anger, when it is controlled, can be a deadly weapon. He could be deadlier than Bullock, though he is well aware that the policeman doesn't realize it.

Bruce, too, had underestimated him, at first. He'd tried not to blame the boy, but anger still welled up in him at the obvious signs that the child thought of him as butler and employee, but resisted thinking of him as more. Bruce did not know, could not understand, what it cost a bachelor butler to throw his entire life into the task of parenting. But fathering meant selflessness, so Alfred did not give up, even when the boy's attitude touched the anger in him and tempted him to reject his promise. He would never, ever give in to the temptation. Bruce was too precious to him, even on his worst days.

There is nothing Alfred wants less than to consult criminals to find out what he wants to know. The very idea fills him with rage because of how deeply opposed it is to everything he chooses to be. But he lets his anger be subsumed by single-minded purpose. The boy is more important.

That's what it came down to. Alfred was angry from the moment he rushed to the scene of the Wayne murders and gathered his ward in his arms. He was angry at himself, angry at the shooter, and angry at the city that produced such heinous acts. But even such blazing righteous fury was so much less important than his care for the boy that it was like a flashlight compared to an inferno. Anger, he learned, could not consume what had already been consumed by love.

Bullock leads the way; Alfred follows. He does not think of his own safety or comfort. He is still angry, but that anger is motivated by love so strong it could destroy a city or rebuild a child.


	48. Bargaining, Part I

_Elizabeth Kubler-Ross identified five stages of grief. The third is bargaining. _

**Bargaining, Part I**

Bruce follows the girl into the lair of the fence. He knows what a fence is, but he has no idea what such a person really looks like or does. Selina begins the transaction, starts bargaining to get what she can for the trinkets she's stolen—_his _things.

After the initial shock and pain of his loss, it took ages for Bruce to admit that he could not live without Alfred. That's when he started bargaining with himself and with his butler. One foot in, one foot out. Accept meals, study when he's told, let Alfred into his research—but still wall himself away, stay up into the night drawing pictures of his nightmares, refuse the therapy the butler suggests.

The boy can't keep quiet. He means to let the Cat-girl handle things, but he's not a doormat, and he knows the value of what he owns; his parents taught him that. Selina may see him as quiet and detached, but some traits are only skin deep. Underneath his skin, he's on fire. He can't just stand by, not even when he's afraid.

When he was five and a half, Bruce's father taught him to swim. He hated water at first, but then he started putting in toes and then feet and finally dangling his leg into the swimming pool, up to the knee, while the rest of him stayed dry on the side. Thomas Wayne, always a patient man, never raised his voice or expressed frustration. He simply fixed his progeny with a meaningful stare and said, "You can't bargain with water, Bruce. You have to either come in or stay out." The boy wasn't entirely sure what "bargain" meant, but he understood the meaning of the statement. Even at five, he didn't like to take risks, but the big, frightening pool held his hero, the person he trusted most in the world. Standing up on thin legs, he gave his father back a stare as intense as the man's had been, then made a flying leap into the pool. He connected with wetness and comfort at the same time, finding himself cradled by warm water and strong arms.

Bruce realizes in moments that it wasn't about the bargaining at all. The malevolent man has plans for him and his companion that go far beyond a simple exchange of stolen property.

The boy tried hard, for a long time, to forget his father's words about bargaining because he knew they didn't just apply to water. He couldn't let Alfred in and keep him out at the same time. It simply didn't work. HIs physical needs were met; he never doubted the older man would see to that. As for the rest—well, on-time meals didn't assuage his longing for something far deeper, and the occasional thanks to his butler didn't lessen his guilt about rebuffing all attempts at comfort or closeness.

The boy is herded into a room with the girl, and he determines that if he's going to die, he'll at least do it helping Selina. He knows what it is to shut out the most important person in your world, to bargain with his affection and barter with your own heart. He refuses to make the same mistake twice. He will sacrifice himself for the girl since he can't sacrifice himself for the butler who's become his hero.


	49. Bargaining, Part II

_Elizabeth Kubler-Ross identified five stages of grief. The third is bargaining._

**Bargaining, Part II**

Alfred follows Bullock into the lair of the Fish. He is well aware of the organized crime that runs rampant in Gotham, but he has no desire to see it face-to-face, to be forced to bargain with people he considers to be less worthy than the ants under his black shoes.

The butler was never one for bargaining. Years of military training and service honed him into a weapon who was much more comfortable doing the shooting than asking the questions. It wasn't that he enjoyed brutality for its own sake, but he had no qualms about putting evil in its place. Surely, parenting could be handled in a similarly absolute sort of way. The problem, he found, was that Bruce Wayne didn't respond to barked orders and stern disapproval. He simply went into himself to a place Alfred couldn't follow. Ever the pragmatist, his butler tried again, a different tactic. He bartered with the boy, making unspoken bargains about schoolwork and mealtimes and safety, but giving up when it came to sleep, the chlld's endless research—and his soul.

Fish Mooney isn't terribly difficult for Alfred to read. It's not that she's uncomplicated, but he's perceptive. It's flattery, an appeal to her better nature, he decides, that will touch her enough to get her to offer help. Her flashiness repulses him, but he's glad that it makes her an open book to him. He needs a bargaining chip.

Bargaining is a bad way to reach a heart, the butler realized, after he and Bruce lived in and around it for a few weeks. Oh, surely, it could achieve compliance, but that was no longer enough for Alfred because he could tell that it was not enough for the boy. Bruce needed a guardian, in every sense of the word, not a business partner who negotiated terms with him every day.

The woman likes him. Alfred can tell that in an instant. She reads him, but not as well as he reads her. He doesn't want to be in her debt. That's the problem with bargaining; you have to give something to get something.

Alfred let go. It wasn't worth Bruce's acquiescence to a few superficial things if, in return, he had to let the boy pull away, shut him out, stay in his own dark world. But, in letting go, he offered something bigger than he'd ever offered before: his love, with no strings attached. He asked for nothing in return, nothing at all. Truthfully, he couldn't help it.

Alfred is silent on the ride to the godforsaken place he and Bullock have been told to go. There's nothing more to say, really. He will die for the boy, or he will live to save the boy. That's all there is left, no more bargaining needed.


	50. Depression, Part I

_Elizabeth Kubler-Ross identified five stages of grief. The fourth is depression._

**Depression, Part I**

Bruce is pretty sure he's not going to make it. It's similar to the feeling he had the night his parents were murdered, but it's duller somehow. Having faced death before, facing it again feels less acute.

There was a dullness to the boy's life after he realized that he couldn't survive alone. He did not want to give in, so he pulled away, burying himself in mounds of files so deep that he was fairly sure he could drown in them and never emerge again. At least, he hoped he could.

The boy tries to calm his nerves, to reconcile himself to the fact that he cannot escape a trained assassin. For all of his efforts to conquer fear, he is still afraid. The dull acceptance of his fate only lasts until he sees Alfred's eyes in his mind.

"There's no one to take me from" had been a wish, a promise to himself, an attempt to desperately escape more heartbreak. The boy could not give in, or he was afraid his heart would shatter into a million more pieces. He was already broken in two. Another break, he thought, would mean he never recovered. So he refused to look at his butler's face when he said the words, trying to convince himself that he could live without the connection he needed most.

The littlest Wayne now knows what it means to feel fear for another, not just for himself. He is concerned for Selina, but she escapes. It is Alfred whose fate he doesn't know. It's even worse to realize that the man who loves him most in the world doesn't know if he's alive, either. He does not want to die, because that means he will never be able to give Alfred what he's wanted all along: his love, unconditional and unlimited.

It was Alfred who gave first. From childhood, Bruce understood his butler's gruffness and occasional short temper. That didn't matter. What he felt, even when he didn't want to admit it, was affection—in meals and light touches of his shoulder and the patient way Alfred took him through his schoolwork. When his life had most threatened to plunge him into unending dullness, his guardian had continued to hold him with calloused hands that had seen battle and pain and endless work.

The boy runs. He cannot die. He cannot fail to live long enough to tell Alfred the truth, that the darkness of his world is turning bright because every day, the butler's care gently paints over a little bit of the black that covers his soul, until the light has started to take him over once again.

* * *

**A/N: Wow, Chapter 50! Thank you to everyone who has stuck around with this story. All of your comments and reviews are amazing. I'm looking forward to the second half of Gotham Season 1!**


	51. Depression, Part II

_Elizabeth Kubler-Ross identified five stages of grief. The fourth is depression._

**Depression, Part II**

Everything is confusing, but that's all right. Alfred was trained, long ago, to keep his senses sharp when everything around him is swirling. He only has one thought: Bruce. He will not let himself calculate the odds that the boy is no longer alive.

Perhaps the depression began the night of the murders. Perhaps it was when he felt the slight, vulnerable little boy hit him like a freight train, wanting comfort. The butler did not know how to be a father then, and he felt less like he knew what he was doing as the days went by. Still, the worst of it didn't set in until he realized that the boy still felt alone. The words "there's no one to take me from" broke his heart more than he'd ever thought it could be broken.

Bullock wants to wait for backup. Alfred does not wait. There is no waiting where the boy is concerned. If he had to, he would put Bruce Wayne on his back and carry the boy home to Wayne Manor. If there is no more boy to take home, he feels like he will disappear, as if there is nothing left of him to matter.

It was, strangely, the deepest heartbreak that made the butler realize he'd completed the transformation from employee to something far more. Before the Horrible Night, Bruce had belonged to Thomas and Martha Wayne. His coming to belong to Alfred had not happened all at once. It had been a journey of small moments punctuated by the butler holding him, comforting him, yelling at him, schooling him, and making sure he was fed and clothed. Many of these things he'd done when the elder Waynes were alive. Somehow, when they were gone, the little acts meant something very different.

Alfred finally sees the boy. He is prone, frightened, and, for once, looks his real age. But he is alive.

Alfred knew that the boy belonged to him long before Bruce was willing to admit it, but even between and among the pain, there was deeper beauty to be found. The butler did not know how to be a father, but he had learned how to love the boy, had learned that being a parent means love so unconditional it can hold the most resistant heart in the world in its gentle grasp. So he held, and he waited.

"Bruce." He calls out the boy's name, and it's the sweetest word he's ever said.


	52. Acceptance, Part I

_Elizabeth Kubler-Ross identified five stages of grief. The fifth is acceptance. _

**Acceptance, Part I**

"Fancy seeing you here."

Bruce looks his butler full in the face, noting the worry and relief blended in the blue eyes that have watched him since birth. He finally lets himself see, lets his mind and heart realize what he's been avoiding since the terrible night: He belongs to Alfred, and Alfred belongs to him. There's no question any more.

He began to give in to the knowledge that day on Tommy Elliot's front steps. It wasn't that Alfred had defended him or that he'd approved of Bruce's retaliation. As comforting as those things were, it had been the simple act of calling out his name that had sealed the deal. Alfred's voice had silenced the anger that threatened to do more damage than the boy intended. He'd understood, from that moment on, that he and Alfred were connected in a way he couldn't deny.

"You all right?"

The butler's voice carries concern so deep he could dive into it and never come to the end. The boy feels a combination of guilt and reassurance. Care that big feels as if it could put his broken heart back together, but that care has been his for the taking all along, and he feels sick at the thought that he's disregarded it.

He remembers day after day of instructions ignored, questions about his needs gone unanswered, meals uneaten. Somehow, in spite of his resistance, Alfred's care has never been withdrawn.

"I'm fine."

He is fine, finer than he's been since his parents' deaths. There's nothing better than knowing you're loved unconditionally, that no matter how selfish or unaware you've been, someone bigger and stronger has been looking out for you all along. Bruce had thought he'd lost that forever, and he'd been too blind to see that it was right in front of him.

Boxing had almost forced emotion from him that he hadn't wanted to display. The physical connection was more intense and visceral a thing than he usually sought to experience, and being so close to the butler had made him want to give in, to finally sink into the authority and protection he was offered. It's not until he's looking down into Alfred's face that he understands: the offer had always been there, and it always would be. That feels like the biggest gift in the world.

"How are you?"

Alfred comes closer, bridging the physical distance, but the boy isn't sure how to bridge the emotional distance. He wants so much to say what he feels, but he doesn't know how.

Another day had been similar, the day he'd asked his butler to teach him to fight. That had been the first attempt, the first time he'd let himself come close enough to feel the connection he could no longer deny. He hadn't known what to say then either, how to thank Alfred for the gift of a father's watch and a butler's support. So he'd asked for help, and that had been the right thing. This time, he asks another question, but it's far more important. If anything had happened to Alfred—but it didn't. The older man is solid and whole in front of him.

"You really scared me, Master Bruce."

The boy wants to hug his butler more than he's wanted anything for a long time, but suddenly a few inches of distance feels like a lot. For the moment, though, it's all right to stand still, facing Alfred, and feel the love between them.

At one point, Bruce had tried to tell himself Alfred didn't care, that a guardian who truly loved him wouldn't yell him down from the roof or get angry at his self-harm. But that had been the biggest lie of all. The butler had only ever lost his temper because he cared so very much. He knows now that his safety is Alfred's first and only priority.

"If you died, who employs butlers any more?"

Bruce is pretty sure he doesn't deserve Alfred Pennyworth. After all, who is he to claim the life of someone else, someone who'd only ever signed on to be the family butler? Alfred gets some kind of salary; the boy has no idea what it is. It can't possibly be enough.

For so long, he'd drifted in a sea of his own grief, oblivious to anything around him. Now he sees things as they really were, his mind filled with all the big and small ways Alfred has cared for him from dawn to dusk, through anger and sadness and indifference.

In an instant, the boy wraps his arms around his butler, trying to communicate everything he can't find the words to say.

Alfred's arms close around him, too, so tight, so strong, that all encompassing feeling of safety that he remembers from his earliest childhood days.

Bruce presses his face into the older man's shoulder, and the truth fills him with a warm, satisfying peace that he hasn't felt since his parents' death. Family doesn't leave you when you're selfish and cross and unintentionally cruel. Their love protects you even on your very worst days, and it asks nothing in return. Alfred Pennyworth is family, and that is the best thing of all.

* * *

For wearegrootforever, a wonderful friend who let me borrow some of her words.


	53. Acceptance, Part II

_Elizabeth Kubler-Ross identified five stages of grief. The fifth is acceptance. _

**Acceptance, Part II**

"Fancy seeing you here."

The boy is in one piece, unharmed, with fear in his eyes but no blood on him. Alfred is glad he put his coat on over the aching wound on his arm. He does not want Bruce to see his injury and worry that the last person he has was ever in danger of being taken away.

At first, after the horror, he had not understood why the boy went off by himself and sought solace in pain and risk. He could not comprehend why his ward seemed to want to shun the only connection left to both of them. They had always been close; at the time they needed each other most, Bruce had pulled away. It was only as the days went by that he began to understand: the child who had lost so much could not bear to let himself love fully in case he lost again. The butler had known little of parenting, but he had understood instinctively that the best response was consistency, reassuring the boy with his every action that he would never leave.

"You all right?"

That's all Alfred cares about any more. If Bruce is all right, the world is all right. He knows much of Gotham, of the twists and turns and ugly compromises that make up a city so dark. But he has narrowed his focus to one thing and one thing only, his promise to Thomas and Martha Wayne to protect their only child. This day, he almost tasted failure, and he thought it would kill him. He does not care for the boy because it is his duty; that might be easier. But the boy is all that he has, and that bond goes far deeper than obligation.

The butler had never known how absolutely consuming frustration could be until the day he'd found the boy with a burn in the middle of his hand. In that moment, all the fear of his own inadequacy, his confusion about Bruce's behavior, and his grief had united to push him further toward rage than he'd been in years. But rage is not the opposite of love. It's so close the two overlap like candle flames melting into one another. Alfred had seen the boy's fear, and the desire to comfort and protect had taken him over like he was drunk. That intoxication had never fully left him since that day.

"I'm fine."

How can he be fine? Physically, he's whole, but Alfred knows the horrors that he's seen and the terrors that still haunt his sleep. Bruce stands above the butler, but there is no mistaking how small he is, how childlike. And yet, there's a relief in his face and in the relaxed way he stands, as if he really is becoming whole. Perhaps—Alfred dares to let himself think—perhaps knowing that someone has been searching for him has somehow filled up a little bit of the hole in the boy's heart.

Day after day, Alfred's job has been trying to find ways to fill that hole, whether by forcing Bruce out into the world or engaging him in physical play to distract his overactive mind. The child has rebuffed him plenty of times, but there have also been the moments he's smiled or laughed inadvertently, showing small flashes of the little boy who still lives inside him. People would say the butler is extraordinarily selfless; he doesn't think so. It brings him too much pleasure to watch Bruce heal.

"How are you?"

The boy's full attention is on him, scanning his face, looking for reassurance that the one constant in his life is all right. Alfred is warmed by the Intensity of his concern, but there's more to it than that. Bruce is hesitant, trying to say what he can't find words to express. The butler understands; he feels the same way. That's why he comes closer.

For a while, after the tragedy, it had seemed like the boy was ignoring him, which had been strange. Bruce had grown up a considerate child who treated his butler with respect. It was not like him to be dismissive or unkind. Alfred had attributed to apparent selfishness to Bruce's grief, but he'd gradually realized it had a more specific cause. Ignoring the butler and refusing to communicate were the boy's clumsy ways of trying to avoid further pain. He couldn't bear to acknowledge their bond because it ran so very deep, and to give it importance meant giving it the power to hurt him. Alfred did not blame him. He'd fought many of the same feelings himself. The difference was that, like it or not, he was no longer just a butler. He was a father, and that meant hanging on even when Bruce tried to let go.

"You really scared me, Master Bruce."

Alfred needs the boy to know, to fully understand how important he is to him. Thomas and Martha Wayne are long buried now, but he is resolved that the vulnerable child in front of him will never live a day without knowing he's valued. The butler does not know the exact moment he went from being a physical protector to being determined to become the boy's shelter in every way, but the transition is now complete. He stands eye-to-eye with the boy, and he knows without any doubt that he has never loved anyone else more.

Few people would think that Alfred Pennyworth is ever afraid, but his deepest fear after he was left alone with the boy was that he would not be enough. Perhaps Bruce would never come to him, would never acknowledge the bond that had linked them since his birth. Maybe he would fall deeper and deeper into the darkness of his pain. But then—on the steps of a bully's mansion—things had changed. For an intense moment, the butler and the child had connected through fist and blood and justice. After that, he had not been afraid any more. Bruce belonged to him. It was only a matter of time until he acknowledged it fully.

"If you died, who employs butlers any more?"

He wants to hold the boy, but he waits, seeing the longing in Bruce's eyes and letting him make the decision. They understand each other now; there is no separation between them. The love the butler feels is so strong it surprises him again. He understands now why parents give their lives for their children.

For so long, he's wished for a moment like this, where the boy's pretense and formality finally give way to honesty and connection. He'd seen a flicker of it when the boy had asked him to teach him to fight, and he'd let himself hope the walls between them had begun to crumble.

Bruce wraps him in a crushing embrace, and he finally knows those walls have fallen.

Alfred hugs his child as tightly as he can, trying to communicate the truth that years' worth of love doesn't evaporate when tragedy comes along, that it only grows and expands until it's big enough to provide protection and shelter for a lifetime.

The boy's head against the butler's shoulder is a precious weight, reminding Alfred that he's still alive, still real, still filled with purpose. When it comes to Bruce Wayne, purpose is synonymous with love, and love is synonymous with purpose. He can no longer separate the two any more than he can figure out where his heart ends and the boy's begins.

* * *

Also for wearegrootforever.


	54. Familiar

**Familiar**

Bruce is lying on the sofa with his head on his butler's knee, reading a graphic novel while Alfred reads the newspaper. It's a familiar position. When he'd been very young, he'd often used Alfred's knee as a pillow. This time, it was simply a matter of the butler taking up a third of his favorite sofa when he'd wanted to lie down.

"I'm glad to see you've gotten some of your comic books back out, Master Bruce," says Alfred's low voice.

"Selina reminded me that I should take more time for recreational purposes," the boy answers.

His butler laughs. "Far be it from you to let yourself enjoy anything without a constructive purpose."

"You're not exactly out every night," Bruce retorts drily.

"If I was, who'd look after you, you cheeky boy?"

With that, Bruce finds the room spinning around him as Alfred grabs him in a tight hold with his feet in the air and his head inches from the ground.

"What are you doing?" he squeaks out.

"Training, Master Bruce," says Alfred, who sounds mightily pleased with himself. "You'll have to learn to be on guard for anything." The boy is flipped up and set gently back on the sofa, and Alfred sits beside him, taking up his paper again as if nothing happened.

"Training, my eye," says Bruce indignantly, but he can't help smiling as he smoothes his rumpled button-down shirt. He picks up his novel and slides back down until his feet are propped up on the armrest and his head is on Alfred's knee. This time, the butler rests his left arm across Bruce's shoulders.

"I'm glad you're all right, lad."

As the events of the day before flash through his mind, the boy answers quietly, "You too, Alfred."


	55. Rest

**Rest**

Alfred sits down on the sofa in Bruce's favorite room. He knows very well that it's where the boy likes to curl up in the evening and often fall asleep. Bruce has spent many a night there since his parents have been gone.

The young master is seated at the table, still perusing the latest crop of articles he's printed, filing some away and stacking others to be added to his pinboard of evidence. The butler doesn't know if the child will sit with him, but he hopes so. He would never voice it aloud, but he longs for closeness. He can't stop thinking about the previous day when he'd almost lost the boy to Selina's assassins. Children may be resilient; old men with only one thing in the world to protect are less so.

The grandfather clock chimes 9:00 before Bruce finally shuts his files, picks up a brightly-colored comic book, and comes over to the sofa. Alfred studiously reads the paper but watches the boy out of the corner of his eye. To his satisfaction, his ward takes a seat on the other end, yawning.

The two read in companionable silence for half an hour, and Alfred finds himself ensconced in a story about the history of Gotham's downtown sector. He hardly notices when Bruce sprawls out across the cushions until he feels the boy's head on his knee.

The butler steals a look down, and his mind casts back to a time when his ward was much smaller and younger, and he'd enjoyed falling asleep with his head on Alfred's knee with the butler's arm around him. The older man had never really understood it. His knee was a sharp, bony sort of thing, and he didn't think it could possibly serve as a very comfortable pillow. But Bruce had never seemed to mind.

Uncharacteristically, the boy is reading for pleasure, and Alfred teases him gently, eliciting a response in kind. For once, the butler indulges a purely silly whim. He's still far stronger than Bruce, and he wrestles him as he'd done when the boy was a tiny little thing who'd laughed with abandon. The preteen Bruce tries to look annoyed, but the butler sees the smile that sneaks onto his pale face.

They return to their respective reading materials, and Alfred finds himself being used as a pillow once again. The boy seems to need to closeness as much as he does, so the butler wraps an arm around his thin shoulders the way he'd done in years past.

"I'm glad you're all right, lad." They haven't spoken about the previous day since their reunion, and he can't help making sure, once again, that Bruce is well aware of how he feels.

"You too, Alfred," the boy answers, turning on his side and closing his eyes as if the older man's knee is somehow the most comfortable resting place in the world.


	56. Gone

**Gone**

"Alfred," says Bruce, on a quiet Monday morning, "it's my mother's birthday." The boy looks up from his perusal of his literature text.

"I know, Master Bruce," the butler answers. "Is there anything special you'd like to do?"

The boy thinks for a moment, trying to decide. "I'd like to visit the florist and the cemetery," he says.

"Very well," the older man answers. "I think we can eschew school for one day. I'll get your coat."

Bruce doesn't say anything as Alfred helps him into his wool coat and puts on his own against the winter chill. He's not sure what he feels. Emptiness, mostly. Part of him wants to let the day pass as if it's like any other, to try to ignore the memories crowding his mind. But the rest of him can't bear not to do something to honor the woman with the beautiful hands and soft voice who gave him life.

Alfred drives him to the florist where his father used to order all the flowers for anniversaries, Mother's Day, and any other time he'd wanted to surprise his wife. Bruce enters decisively, with Alfred just behind him.

"Bruce Wayne!" says a smiling, middle-aged woman at the register. "I haven't seen you since you were small."

"Hello, Mrs. Bradford," he says quietly. "I'd like an arrangement with white lilies, red roses, and the purplest lilacs you can find."

The woman's smile leaves her face, and the boy can tell that she knows what the flowers are for. She's made hundreds of arrangements for Martha Wayne in her lifetime. She knows what the woman's favorite flowers were.

"I'll make something special," she says, a soft look in her eyes. "I'll put you right at the top of the list. I need about two hours."

"What do I owe you?" Bruce asks gravely.

Mrs. Bradford looks into his eyes for a second. "This one's on me. I know what day it is."

The boy blinks. He doesn't want to get emotional in front of someone he hardly knows. "Oh—ok," he says, turning to Alfred. "We'll be back."

He's about to get back into the car when his butler asks an unusual question. "Would you like to ride up front with me, Master Bruce?"

"Yeah," he replies. Funny how Alfred always seems to know when he's feeling particularly lonely. Sometimes, when he'd been very young, Alfred had put him in the front seat to keep an eye on him. It's been years since then.

Bruce takes his seat on the passenger's side, staring straight ahead through the windshield. "Are you hungry?" Alfred asks, taking his own place.

"No," the boy replies. "Let's just drive until the flowers are ready."

"As you wish," says the butler, starting the car. "Would you like to talk about your mum?"

Bruce turns his head and stares out the side window. "Too many things," he says quietly.

"Do you have a favorite memory, Master Bruce?" the butler tries again.

"Just—just her," says the boy, his mind a jumble of smells and touches and whispers. "The way she walked, her perfume, her smile. I still can't—believe she's gone."

"Me either," Alfred answers.


	57. Remembered

**Remembered**

The butler drives along grimy downtown streets, wondering what's in the mind of the boy sitting next to him. It's a sad day for him, too. Martha Wayne had been something more than an employer—something like a sister. And part of him still blames himself for her death.

"I met your mum when she was young, you know," he finally begins. "She sat with me every day at the hospital when my father was dying, and when they finally turned off the life support, she held my hand until he passed. She hardly knew me, but it didn't matter."

"That's not my favorite memory, though." He turns to the boy, and he can tell Bruce is listening, though he doesn't look away from the window.

"That's from the night your mum and dad asked me to look after you if anything ever happened to them. You were barely nine months old, and your dad said he knew I could protect you. Your mum, though—she brought you over to me, and she said, 'Alfred, I know you'll take care of him because you love him,' and she kissed my cheek. I don't think I've ever blushed so hard in my life."

Out of the corner of his eye, he can see a smile at the corner of the boy's mouth. "She was a rare woman, your mum." He clears his throat, trying to say what is more difficult to express. "You're lucky to have had her, even for a short time, lad.

"I know it," Bruce answers. "So are you." They fall silent then, sharing both their grief and their bittersweet gratefulness.

Alfred makes a wide circuit around Gotham's downtown and finally makes his way back to the small florist shop. As before, Bruce squares his shoulders and leads the way inside. The butler is proud of the way he's begun to take responsibility.

On Mrs. Bradford's counter is a vase of flowers so lovingly crafted that even Alfred, who is hardly an authority on the florist's art, can tell it's uncommonly beautiful. "Here you are," says the gray-haired woman, handing the arrangement to Bruce.

"Thank you, Mrs. Bradford," he says dutifully. "My mother would have liked it." He turns tail and leaves the shop, getting back into the front seat before the butler even has time to open his door for him.

Alfred doesn't speak. He knows their next destination, and he drives to the outskirts of the city and to the calm green expanse of the cemetery where Thomas and Martha Wayne are laid to rest. The security officer knows him by sight and simply nods and opens the gate, and the butler drives to the secluded stretch of ground where the Wayne family plots lie.

This time, the boy waits for him to open his door, seeming hesitant to get out. He hasn't visited the graves since the funeral. There's no one else in sight, and Alfred kneels down next to his seated charge until he's at eye level and puts a hand on his knee. "Master Bruce, I'm going to walk away for a while to give you some privacy. You can decide what you'd like to do." The boy nods, pulling his coat tighter around him.

The butler walks several paces off and takes his seat on a stone bench, keeping his eyes on the boy to make sure he's safe. He watches as Bruce finally gets out of the car with flowers in hand and carefully places them in the iron holder atop Martha's grave, then sits down in front of it, facing the headstone. He can't hear what Bruce says, but he can see his lips moving, and he's glad. It will be good for the boy, he thinks, to talk about how he feels to the memory of the one person who could always untangle his complicated emotions.

After a long while, Bruce stands up, and Alfred takes it as his cue to rejoin him and pay his own respects. Like he did at the funeral, he reaches out to the boy, but this time, instead of a hand on the shoulder, he wraps his arm around Bruce so that it spans the front of both shoulders and pulls him closer. The boy's breathing is measured and calm. "I'm ready to leave," he finally says, breaking the physical contact.

"Very well," Alfred answers.

As they get back into the car, the butler looks at his ward and smiles sadly. "Master Bruce, your mum would be very proud of you. She always said you'd grow up to be something special."

The boy looks over at him and almost smiles back. "She wasn't wrong about you either, Alfred."

* * *

**A/N: I'm trying to make the hiatus bearable for us all, so if you have suggestions for chapters/things you want to see, let me know! xx**


	58. The Scratch

**The Scratch**

Bruce comes into the kitchen, lured by the smell of spices. His parents had rarely gone there; it had been an understanding that butler and employers did not share the same domains. It was different for Bruce, as with generations of privileged children before him, who could go where they wished without the same restrictions. Now that he and Alfred are alone, those walls have crumbled even further, rather than strengthening, as they might have one day done if circumstances had been different.

"Hello, Master Bruce." As always, Alfred hears him coming. "Are you hungry?"

"Yes," answers the boy, pushing dark hair out of his eyes. "Algebra makes me famished."

Alfred laughs. "I can't say I blame you. You're better at it than I ever was. Come over here, and I'll let you put some of the last seasonings in the chili."

Bruce walks across the tile to the stovetop, coming to stand next to his butler, who has his jacket off and the sleeves of his shirt rolled up. The boy's eyes widen when he catches a glimpse of a large square bandage. "Alfred, what happened to your arm?"

"It's nothing, Master Bruce," comes the answer, as the older man stirs the vat of piping hot beans and meat.

The boy folds his arms. "You're not that much better at lying than I am. Out with it."

Alfred turns to him with an amused smile on his face. "The lad becomes the inquisitor, eh? If you must know, I acquired a scratch in that squabble with the lovely lady and her companions who came here to dispatch Miss Kyle."

"Looks like a lot more than a scratch. Why didn't you tell me?" Bruce's eyes narrow and fill with intensity.

"I didn't want to worry you," answers the butler.

"I'm not a child, Alfred," the boy snaps, though the vastness of the height and size difference between him and the man he's berating belie his words, even to himself.

The older man's expression softens as his hardens. "I'm nearly forty years older than you are, and I have at least eighty pounds on you. When you come up past my shoulder and somewhere near my weight class, I'll be very glad to think of you as an equal."

The boy glowers for a moment before smiling against his will, then quickly growing serious again. "I'm sorry you got hurt protecting me. I—should have been the one who got hurt. The reason Selina was here is because I said she could stay."

Alfred reaches out and puts a hand on his shoulder. "Protecting you is my job, Master Bruce, and I've never—regretted it." He takes the wooden spoon out of the chili and shakes it in the boy's direction. "But don't you get too relaxed, old son. I'm not going anywhere." The boy grins contentedly and takes his place next to his butler in front of the stove, holding his hand out for the shaker of chili powder that will finish their meal.


	59. Equals

**Equals**

Alfred checks on his ward, who, miracle of miracles, is actually curled up in his bed, sleeping peacefully. Out of habit, the butler pulls the blanket, half fallen onto the floor, back up and over the boy's slender frame. As he does so, he feels a twinge of pain from his still-healing arm.

_Stupid Alfred_, he thinks. He'd never meant to let the boy see his injury, knowing how much it would bother him. And why shouldn't it?

The butler remembers, with vivid clarity, the last days of his own father's life. He'd left his own life and career to answer the request of a dying man to take up a post he'd never planned to inhabit, though as soon as he'd met the Waynes, his misgivings had ceased.

But he recalls the emptiness of the moment when the beeping of machines had recorded the inescapable truth that he was an orphan. It hadn't mattered that he was a tall, strong man, battle-hardened and years into adulthood. He'd felt like a little boy. There was something unbearably bleak about knowing he was alone in the world. Even though oceans had separated them, the knowledge that his kind-eyed father, with his big hands and ready smile, was alive and well had comforted him and made him feel protected, even in the darkest of circumstances. Having that comfort ripped away brought stinging tears to his eyes.

Martha Wayne, who'd been holding his calloused hand in her smooth one, had squeezed her small fingers around his and held on tightly while the nurses came and went, recording the time and the event. When it was all over, she'd driven him home to the manor, instead of the other way around. Alfred Pennyworth, veteran of the special services and unflappable butler, had cried himself to sleep that night, his mind filled with memories of a London childhood and a father who had taught him how to be a man.

In the days that followed, he'd learned that working for the Wayne family didn't just mean formal interactions between master and servant. It meant laughter, shared meals when Thomas and Martha insisted, and evenings spent in each others' company. Thomas and Martha Wayne _liked _him. And gradually, serving them and having their friendship filled up some of the emptiness in his heart. It wasn't the same as what he'd lost, but he came to understand how fulfilling it could be.

In the end, losing Thomas and Martha had staggered Alfred nearly as much as losing his parents, but he doesn't let himself dwell on it. What he focuses on, as he watches the boy sleep, is how much he understands Bruce's pain. He knows what it is to be an orphan and what it is to find someone else to fill up some of the emptiness. He also knows what it is to lose them, and he understands the boy's terror at the idea that the last person he has could be taken away.

Of course, the real truth of it all is that Alfred worries for Bruce as much as Bruce worries for him. Perhaps they are equals after all, at least in the realm of loss and love. He is the boy's last shelter, but the boy is also his. He may have forty years and eighty pounds on Bruce, but he finds as much comfort in caring for the boy as the boy finds in being cared for.

"Are you all right, Alfred?" Bruce opens his sleepy eyes and looks up at the butler, who stands motionless by his bed, lost in thought.

"I'm fine," the older man answers. "Go back to sleep."

"You too," says the boy, turning on his side and closing his eyes. "We have a full day of sparring tomorrow, and I'll win if you're not careful."

Alfred smiles to himself. "Cheeky boy," he growls, as he leaves the room.


	60. The Gift of the Magi

**The Gift of the Magi**

_The Magi brought three gifts to the child Jesus: Gold, frankincense and myrrh._

"Alfred, I've decided what I want for Christmas."

Bruce has been pondering the question for weeks, after the butler told him he had to decide. The older man had agreed not to decorate; neither of them wanted to evoke the painful memories that would inevitably come with handling the familiar ornaments and figurines that Martha Wayne had loved.

But Alfred had insisted on presents. "I'm not going to be responsible to your parents' sainted memories for failing to give their son something to mark the day," he'd said with finality. "It was their favorite thing in the whole year."

"All right," Bruce had acquiesced seriously. "I'll think about it." He'd authorized the Waynes' yearly Christmas check to Gotham's largest homeless shelter and then sat for a long time with his chin in his hands, trying to think of something he wanted. Finally, after several such periods of thought, he'd come to an answer, two days before Christmas Eve.

Alfred looks up from Quickbooks, where he's been doing his monthly work on the Wayne family finances—they have several financial advisors, but the butler chooses to oversee things himself, in case there should ever be a discrepancy. "Yes, Master Bruce?"

"Three questions," the boy answers. "After all, three gifts is a customary amount."

"Questions?" Alfred looks perplexed.

"Yes," Bruce nods. "On Christmas Eve, I'll ask you three questions, and you have to answer them honestly. That's what I want for Christmas." He drills his butler with his eyes, hoping the man will say yes.

Alfred stares back for a few seconds, considering. "Very well," he finally answers, "if it's what you really want. However," Alfred continues, "if that's what you get, I want the same thing. After all, old butlers get Christmas presents too."

Bruce smiles. "Ok."

* * *

It's Christmas Eve, and the wind is howling outside Wayne Manor, making the light dusting of snowflakes whirl around the mansion like tiny tornadoes. Bruce stands at the open front door, watching as day gives way to night.

In a moment, he feels a too-big jacket wrap around his shoulders. "Come inside," his guardian says. "We can't have you catching cold. Besides, I have spiced cocoa for you."

"Thank you, Alfred." The boy wraps his butler's jacket tighter around his chilly limbs. It smells like the older man's cologne—warm, deep, and sweet.

Alfred leads the way to Bruce's favorite sitting room, and the boy finds a tea tray with cookies and a pot of hot, steamy liquid. He sits on the sofa and takes a plate, filling it with snickerdoodles. The butler sits down with him and pours two generously-sized mugs of chocolate.

"I'd like my present now," says Bruce, after a few moments of companionable silence. He looks over and sees something like apprehension cross Alfred's face. "Three questions, total honesty." He repeats the terms.

"Very well, the butler answers, folding his hands in his lap and keeping his eyes on the boy.

"You ask one, then I will. We'll take turns." The boy nods, feeling a little bit of apprehension creep into his own mind. Total honesty is not a small thing, and part of him almost wishes he'd picked a conventional present. But most of him just wants to know."

"Alfred, why did you come here to be our butler?"

The older man takes a gold coin out of his pocket. "Do you remember this?" he asks, handing it to Bruce.

The boy nods. "I used to play with it when I was little."

"I never told you where it came from," Alfred continues. "Your father found it on a street in Iraq the day we met. He gave it to me the day I got off the plane in Gotham. My father was dying, Master Bruce, and he sent me a letter asking me to come and take his place as the butler and caretaker for the Wayne family. I wouldn't have done it for any other family, but I knew the name. I hadn't seen your father in years, but we'd served together—in the desert. It's a long story. Maybe some day, when I'm even older than now, I'll tell it to you. But suffice to say, your father was a very brave man. We saved each other's lives more than once."

"I came to honor my father and to repay a debt of friendship, but I—it became more than that. Much more. I hadn't been here a week before I knew that I'd come to the right place."

The boy hands the coin back to his butler and feels the older man's calloused hand brush his fingers. He curls into the sofa with his feet under him, clutching the story to his heart like a treasure.

"Are you cold?" Alfred rises and brings him an afghan, tucking it around him the way he always does before taking his seat back on the sofa.

"My turn," he says, smiling.

"All right," Bruce answers, his eyes wide and attentive.

"Master Bruce, are you happy? I don't mean—I know what it is to lose family and friends. God knows I've seen enough people die for a dozen lifetimes, and I know how much the darkness lingers. But—we're trying, you and I, aren't we?" The speech is a halting one. The butler is rarely so direct when it comes to feelings.

The boy thinks about his days, about the boxing and the schoolwork and the yelling, the frustration and the comfort, the gradual, slow change from living beside his butler to realizing that Alfred is something far more.

"After they died," he says quickly, "I—thought I was alone. But I'm not alone any more Alfred, and that's like being happy." He finally catches the butler's eye, and the older man nods once in understanding.

Bruce munches on a cinnamon cookie, regaining his equilibrium. "Me again," he says. "Alfred, are you happy?" He hadn't been planning to ask it, but he was willing to let go of one of his three precious queries to find it out. The butler's question had made him realize how little he thought of Alfred's happiness, and the thought made him feel a little bit ashamed.

The butler turns to him and smiles, one of his peaceful smiles that the boy always finds comforting, the kind that slowly fills his whole face until it gets to his blue eyes and turns them into something like pure peace. When he was a little boy, he'd always loved making Alfred smile.

"When I was young, I thought there was nothing better than fighting," the butler says. "I loved doing my duty for my queen and my country. I couldn't believe there was anything better. Then, when I came here and worked for your mum and dad, serving them made me so happy that I couldn't believe that any more happiness existed in the whole world. It was like someone had given me a winning ticket to the lottery. But then something even better happened." He pauses for a moment.

"What?" Bruce asks, totally engrossed.

"You, of course, you numpty," Alfred answers. "So what do you think? I've lost two people who made me very happy, but I still have my duty, and more than that, I have the one person who's always made me the happiest of all." The boy blinks rapidly, trying to control the wetness springing to his eyes.

"Now," says Alfred, "my second. Are you afraid, Master Bruce?"

The boy answers thoughtfully. "Sometimes I have nightmares, and when the assassin came here, I was frightened. But it's not as bad as it was before, because," his voice drops to a near-whisper, "you came for me."

The butler nods, satisfied. "Don't you worry. As long as there's breath in this body, I will always protect you."

Bruce sips his cocoa, trying to work up to his third question, the one he's really wanted to ask all along. "Last one," he says quietly. "Alfred, you were our butler. You worked for my parents. When—when it happened, you didn't have to stay with me. Why did you stay?"

Alfred reaches out a hand and cups Bruce's chin. The boy tries to look down, but the butler forces him to meet his eyes. "I could say it was because I'd promised," he says, "or because it was my duty. Or because I'd given my life to the Wayne family. But it's Christmas Eve, and I promised you honesty, didn't I?"

Bruce nods into the older man's hand. "All those answers would be rubbish," says the butler. "I stayed because I love you." The boy scoots closer to Alfred, hoping he won't mind. He's answered by strong arms wrapping around him and settling him comfortably against his butler's chest.

"Thank you for my present, Alfred," he says calmly, listening to the heartbeat under his ear.

"You're welcome," says the butler. "I still have one more question, don't I?" Bruce nods against him.

"I can't think of anything else to ask," Alfred says, "but I want you to listen." The boy sits up and faces him.

"My old son," says the butler, "I don't know half of what goes on in that head of yours, but I want you to know one thing—your parents would be very proud of you,and don't you dare to disbelieve me." Tears spring to Bruce's eyes again, and he sinks back into Alfred's arms so he can hide his face.

The boy and the man linger for a long time, as dusk turns to deep darkness, and the only light in the room is cast by a single lamp. Bruce knows that day will bring a return to their semi-formality and the reticence that usually conceals the deeper feelings they share, but Christmas Eve is a magical night, and it's one he will remember all his life. There is an ache of loss and missing deep in his heart, but he's also filled with a peace that's thicker than the afghan that covers him, a warm light fueled by connection and love that are stronger than death.

* * *

**A/N: **I hope everyone had wonderful holidays. I'd hoped to get this up closer to Christmas Day, but I was very unwell, and I had to have surgery unexpectedly just before the new year. I'm feeling better and looking forward to the return of Gotham!

Also, the idea that Alfred and Thomas Wayne served together in the military is canon to Batman: Earth One, which has a version of Alfred that is very close to Sean Pertwee's characterization in Gotham, so I decided to use it.


	61. Dreams

**Dreams**

It's a new year. Bruce sits and stares out the window, watching the wind whip the trees outside to and fro. "Looks like we'll have a storm later," says Alfred, coming into the room with mugs of tea and plates of toast.

"Are you all right?" the butler asks as he hands the boy one of the drinks.

"I'm fine," Bruce answers quickly, forcing himself to smile. He doesn't want to worry his guardian with the tale of another nearly-sleepless night.

"Nightmares," the older man says. "Your eyes are red, and you look like you were up all night again."

The boy takes a bite of buttered toast. "I'm fine, Alfred. I'm used to it." He should have known the older man would never miss the signs.

"I have them too, you know," says the butler, sitting down beside Bruce.

"Really?" Alfred has never admitted this to the boy, and he's surprised and intrigued. He'd thought adults didn't have nightmares—at least, not adults like Alfred Pennyworth. It seemed to him as if nightmares would run at the sight of his butler.

"What—are they like?" Bruce asks curiously and a little bit haltingly. Talking about his own horrifying dreams feels almost unbearably personal, and he doesn' t want to intrude on Alfred's privacy.

The butler smiles sadly. "At first, it was mostly your mum and dad. I used to dream about that night, over and over, about all the things I could have done differently, about the way it all happened, how it must have been, since I wasn't there. I used to wake up furious because in my dreams, sometimes I could change things, but when I woke up, they were always the same."

"I know how it feels," Bruce says very softly, looking down at his plate.

"It's different now," Alfred continues. "Now, it's mostly you." The boy turns his intense gaze on his butler, intrigued. "I usually dream that you're in danger. The good dreams are the ones when I save you. The bad ones—I'm not in time."

Bruce grins suddenly, this time a real smile that lights up his whole face. "That's why you're teaching me to fight, Alfred," he says excitedly. "When you can't save me any more, I'll be strong enough to save you."

The butler reaches out and grips Bruce's chin, looking him in the eyes. "It's going to be a very, very long time before I'm ready to stop saving you, and don't you forget it."

"I know," the boy answers. "I used to be alone in my dreams, but now you're in most of them. Now you always save me."


	62. Etching

**Etching**

Alfred blinks. It's insane how easily the boy can bring tears to his eyes. He's never been a maudlin man, but somehow, hearing that he's the hero of his ward's dreams is enough to make his eyes mist.

It's not really about the nightmares; at least, that's far from the only thing. It's about knowing that he holds a trusted enough place in the boy's mind that even his dreams are forced to recognize Alfred's role as his protector.

He's finally etched himself onto Bruce Wayne's soul.

People might say that it had always been that way, that a butler who has loved a child since birth would, of course, be part of that child's heart. But there is a difference between being a caretaker and being a father, and the months since the Waynes' deaths have made that difference clearer to Alfred than ever before.

And there is a difference between being a duty and being a son.

Sometimes, when the butler and the boy spar, Alfred finds himself on the receiving end of a punch. Even as he grunts from the unexpected pain, he feels pride fill him at Bruce's growing proficiency. Living with the boy is a little like that, too. The sucker punch of emotion that hits him at the most unexpected moments also fills him with a new kind of satisfaction that he's never known before, the satisfaction of knowing that he's entwined with the boy in an uncommon way, a way that is normally given only to fathers and mothers.

Alfred's nightmares are painful. They strike at his most primal fear, the terror that he will lose the boy as he lost the parents. But the very depth of his fear reminds him, every time he wakes up, of the equally unfathomable depth of his love.

Sometimes loving the boy is like carving stone, etching beauty out of jagged, painful edges, shard by shard. But the moments when weariness and desperation meet trust and love make it more than worth the effort.


	63. Tears

**Tears**

Crying is confusing. Bruce likes things that makes sense—the pins that link pictures to papers to emails on his research wall, the way water always freezes at a certain temperature, the clockwork regularity of Alfred's meals.

The tears pouring out of him make no sense at all. If it was just about the girl, it would be understandable. But once he starts, he can't stop, and images of blood and the sounds of screams fill his mind.

"Shall I get a broom?"

It's as if the butler is holding out a lifeline. The boy looks up and finds compassion in the deep blue eyes that stare back. It's not a soft compassion, but it's what he craves. He wants, after all, to be a man—like Alfred.

Bruce nods, and he's rewarded by the approval that fills Alfred's face. When he thinks back on this day, he will remember betrayal. He will also remember that he chose to get up, move forward, square his shoulders, and take responsibility.

Some day, when he looks back, he will be proud.


	64. Knowing How

**Knowing How**

Alfred plates filet mignon as meticulously as he does everything. He's in the kitchen, so he can't see the small, grim figure waiting in the dining room, but it's as if he can feel the heaviness in the house. He wonders if he was too hard on the boy, and Martha Wayne's face in his mind reproaches him. _I'm not a father_, he growls crossly to himself and to her memory. _I don't know how._

He finds Bruce at the table, calmly working on logic problems while he waits for his meal. The boy is unusually pale, but the traces of tears are gone from his face. "Thank you, Alfred," he says quickly, as the butler places the plate in front of him.

Alfred studies his ward's face. The boy is complicated, and often, things seem to be over with and done for until they erupt hours or days later into an emotional storm. _It's a nightmare night_, he thinks, almost subconsciously.

That's why, when day turns to evening, the butler finds excuses to stay up later than usual. These days, he often leaves Bruce to research into the small hours, since he's given up on trying to force the boy to keep to a normal bedtime.

Alfred vacuums and dusts the unoccupied rooms of Wayne Manor, then peeks into the boy's sitting room, finding him as diligent as ever, hunched over a pile of papers. There's only so much that needs doing, and the butler is almost out of ideas. He goes back to the kitchen to do something he hasn't done in ages.

There's no entertaining in Wayne Manor any more. Alfred opens the silver closet and takes out Martha Wayne's prized set, smiling to himself at the memories of some of her finest parties. She'd laughed a great deal, and her laugh had made her seriously-minded husband and son laugh with her. He misses that mirth. It seems strange to polish what is no longer used, but the job is necessary, and he starts on the pieces one by one.

"Alfred?"

The butler looks up from his work and finds Bruce in the doorway of the kitchen, rubbing tired eyes.

"Yes, Master Bruce?"

"Why are you doing the silver at one in the morning?"

"A butler's work is none of your concern," Alfred answers, not sharply, but Bruce is smart, and he simply stands there and observes for a few seconds.

"I used to do that when I was little, didn't I?" he asks after a while.

Alfred nods. "I'm surprised you remember that."

"I think—" Bruce says seriously, after another extended pause, "that I'd like a hug." The butler blinks. With Bruce Wayne, it's never what he expects, and for all the boy's quiet inwardness, he can be surprisingly direct.

Alfred welcomes his charge into his arms and gives him a firm embrace. It's not a long contact, but when Bruce pulls away, he looks calmer. "Thank you, Alfred. You should go to bed." The boy walks away, disappearing down the hall toward his room.

The butler leans against the counter and shakes his head. Sometimes he wonders who's older—himself or the slight boy with the deep brown eyes. Even more, he often wonders who it is that's taking care of whom.


	65. Human

**Human**

Jim Gordon is still surprised by Bruce Wayne.

He's resigned himself to it, really. The boy is never going to act like Gordon ever acted as a kid, or like any other child the cop has ever seen, for that matter.

But it still hurts. It still pierces him when Bruce, who seems to have grown half a foot over night, looks at him with those daggers he has for eyes and tells him he's released from his promise to find the Waynes' killer.

He shakes his head to clear it as he walks back to his car, and he realizes that he's let himself get attached. Again. He's not related to Bruce Wayne, and they're unconnected, except for being burned by the fire of shared experience. But he likes the boy—loves the boy, maybe.

He's not afraid to admit it.

Jim's mother once told him that love is the thing that makes people human. He figures, now that he's an adult, that it's the only thing that can keep cops human, at any rate.

Bruce Wayne may be the richest person in Gotham, but money can't stop love. Jim is determined to keep looking, and no amount of disapproval from a boy trying hard to be a man is going to stand in his way.

* * *

**A/N: Jim's internal perspective, here and throughout this story, primarily comes from Gotham the show, but it also comes from Batman: Year One, which is partly from his perspective (and where I think Gotham gets its characterizations of both him and Barbara Kean). It's a uniquely-written graphic novel, probably the best-written one I've ever read (in my opinion). It contrasts Gordon's actions and view of himself as a "tough cop" with the fact that he's obviously a very softhearted and compassionate person who is constantly pulled toward kindness. I recommend it highly because I think relatively few graphic novels manage the amount of narrative sophistication and intricate character perspectives (of both Gordon and Bruce) that it has. (Plus, Bruce Wayne's physical appearance was modeled after Gregory Peck…nothing to complain about there…)**


	66. Collar and Lapels

**Collar and Lapels**

Jim Gordon hasn't met many butlers in his time, but he has an idea of them—from movies and TV. They're unobtrusive, quiet, and respectful. They hardly speak above a whisper.

Alfred Pennyworth is nothing like that. Oh, sure, he's neat and skilled and polite. But there's something else underneath it, something the soldier in Jim recognizes.

Alfred is dangerous.

And that's good for the boy. The little billionaire with his haunted face and determined chin needs a grizzly bear on his side, a protector who will stop at nothing to insure his safety.

That's why, when Pennyworth straightens his shirt collar and thumbs his lapels like they're brass knuckles, Jim is glad. He wishes they would both trust him, the butler and the boy, but if that's not possible, at least he knows he's leaving Bruce in good hands.

A long time ago, Jim had a father who made him feel safe. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, he still dreams about being protected by someone other than himself. He hasn't felt that kind of shelter in his daytime life for ages. He's glad the boy doesn't have to give it up quite yet. He just hopes, for Bruce's sake, that Alfred Pennyworth lives forever.

* * *

**A/N: Yeah, ok, I couldn't resist. It's kind of a sly nod to the fact that Alfred sort of does live forever, if you think about it. **


	67. Author's Note

If this isn't your kind of thing, feel free to ignore it and wait for the next part of the story :)

As the writer of this story, I'd like to explain why updates haven't been coming as frequently lately and why they may not come incredibly fast in the future. To do so, I'm going to give you some personal background.

Over eleven years ago, I was diagnosed with an incurable digestive disease called Crohn's. My doctors could not get the disease into remission, and I was very ill for ten of those eleven years. Several months ago, I went in for a routine scope to assess the disease's progress, and I was diagnosed with a fairly large cancerous tumor in my large intestine that was caused by the Crohn's. A couple of weeks later, I had life-changing surgery for removal of my entire large intestine and the placement of a permanent ileostomy.

When I started this story, I was in the middle of several horrible months of chemotherapy. Since December of 2014, I've been finished with chemo, and I'm cancer free, but I've also had extreme complications. In late December, I had a second surgery, and on February 27th of this year, I had a third.

Before my third surgery, I was experiencing severe bleeding on an almost daily basis, to the point that my hemoglobin dipped almost low enough to cause heart failure. Since the surgery, I'm doing better, but there's still something wrong with my blood that the doctors are trying to figure out.

Over the past week, to put all of this in immediate perspective, I've had days where I barely had enough strength to crawl out of bed. As a result of chemo, I have constant peripheral neuropathy (nerve damage) that is so excruciating that there are days I can't type because my hands hurt or they just won't work. It will hopefully improve, but it can take years.

I'm a very positive person, and I'm happy to be alive and proud of what I've come through. Your kind reviews and support have cheered me up at difficult moments and helped me keep going. That said, pacing and updating are probably going to continue to be uneven-more writing when I'm feeling better, less when I'm fatigued or my hands won't do their job. I realize that requests and suggestions of more frequent updates are a compliment because you guys like the story, but they're just not necessarily possible for me to fulfill.

I hope you all understand :)


	68. Instinct

**Instinct**

Alfred has lived his life by instinct.

Instinct had kept him alive when there was no sight or sound to alert him to the presence of enemy forces, and the only thing to let him know he was in danger was the prickle on the back of his neck. It had enabled him to anticipate Thomas's and Martha Wayne's needs before they stated them. And it had helped him pick his battles with the boy.

To a point.

As he arranges the strap of Bruce Wayne's rucksack across the boy's thin shoulder, his instinct screams at him to forbid the solitary trip, to insist on being present or keeping his charge at home. But even as the thought occurs to him, he feels its irrationality. Bruce is old enough, and he deserves to pay homage to his father how he will.

His instinct is no longer objective, no longer the clear-eyed judgment of a man who has seen the world and lived through many dangers in it. He's compromised. Love alone did not compromise him, but _parental _love—that is the most compromising thing he has ever experienced.

He doesn't know when the calmly objective care of a butler decided, without his active consent, to become the all-encompassing love of a father. He only knows, as he watches the boy leave, that it happened.

He makes himself a pot of tea and tries to settle down to do the household accounts, but his heart isn't in it. Within the half hour, he changes his clothes and packs his own rucksack. He no longer cares if the impulse is reasonable.

After all, he's always lived his life by instinct.


	69. Always

**Always**

Bruce packs his bag.

He puts in the flashlight his mother gave him for his eleventh birthday. It's large and heavy and weighty, a grown man's flashlight. "This will help you find your way," she'd said, kissing his forehead.

His canister of matches clatters in, reminding him of his father teaching him to make a fire, telling him he was responsible enough.

Extra socks. A scarf. Ace bandages just in case. He hears his parents' voices in every object.

He almost turns back, gives up the trip. There's something profane in taking the journey by himself. It's not meant to be this way.

But there's a deeper obligation. Generations of Waynes have made this trek, and someday—perhaps—he will make it with his own son. Children don't think this way, but Bruce is no longer a child.

He picks up his pack, and Alfred arranges it around his thin shoulders. Courage radiates from the older man, and Bruce absorbs it the way parched earth absorbs rain, feeling it seep into him and strengthen his resolve.

He tells Alfred not to worry. He knows where he's going. He doesn't need anyone's help.

But sometimes—sometimes he wants it.

* * *

"Come along, Damian." Bruce watches Alfred hug his reluctant offspring, who nevertheless looks like he enjoys the contact.

He nods to Alfred and wraps his arm around his son's shoulders. The boy is slight, like he once was. He knows that Damian is no longer fragile, but it doesn't matter. He still feels the ache of his loss.

"Where are we going, Father?" Time in Gotham has not erased the child's old-fashioned speech patterns. Perhaps it doesn't matter. They suit him, somehow.

"Hiking," Bruce answers. "We're going where my father used to take me. It's—tradition." He feels shy all of a sudden, unsure how to explain the importance of the journey. Damian is silent for some time after this, which is unsurprising. Neither father nor son is given to excessive speech.

Finally, when they've left the manor far behind, Bruce feels his son's eyes on him, dark and intense and curious. "Didn't grandfather Wayne die when you were my age?"

"A little older," Bruce answers. He's told Damian the story more than once.

"Did you take the trip by yourself after that?"

It's an interesting question, tending to more than it seems, the curiosity of a little boy wondering what it means to grow up—whether it means being alone, self-sufficient, independent.

"No," Bruce answers, smiling. "I tried once, but Alfred followed me. After that, I always brought him."

Damian smiles and nods. Of course Alfred followed. He always does.

* * *

**A/N: Damian Wayne wanted to appear in this section. Who am I to say no?**


	70. Tracking

**Tracking**

Alfred follows the boy's tracks easily. Bruce is making good time, but the butler still has to consciously slow his pace so that he doesn't overtake him. It wouldn't do to make his presence known when he's not asked for.

That's how it always is with his charge. It's a matter of looking after him without seeming to do so, to care for him while making him think he's caring for himself. Alfred has learned the hard way that it doesn't work to be overly forceful, but the boy isn't ready to be left to himself, either. He still needs parenting, like it or not.

Everything the butler sees reminds him of Thomas Wayne, who had loved the outdoors so much that he wouldn't sell his excess property, even when developers had offered him millions.

Alfred had seen, time and time again, how the vastness of the outdoors had helped to expand the doctor's mind when it had threatened to collapse in on itself. The father had not been so different from the son that way.

"Maybe you should have been his father. You'd have pulled him out of himself." The two men had been standing by the Wayne property lake when Thomas had said it. He'd laughed.

"You understand him better," Alfred had rejoined calmly. He'd been right, he recalls, as he approaches that same lake. Now, however, he hopes Thomas had been right, too. He walks around the water and follows the boy's tracks as they disappear deeper into the woods.

At one time, Bruce had been able to lose him easily, to disappear into the density of his own mind and retreat into himself until the butler could no longer follow. But Alfred Pennyworth is a skilled tracker. Now he knows how to follow, and the boy need never be alone again.


	71. Memory

**Memory**

Bruce comes up to the stones without feeling much of anything. He's enjoying the weather and the view and the walk, not overly troubled by anything in particular—until he goes to add to the pile. That's when his mind is flooded with images of the previous year.

It hadn't been anything they'd said—it had been the feeling, the experience of absolute security he'd had knowing that his father was beside him, the longer strides matching his shorter ones, their shadows blending into one.

He's angry, suddenly. Angry at the world for taking that feeling away and angry at himself for caring. He doesn't _want _to commemorate this. He doesn't want to remember any more. Instead, he ravages the pile of stones as savagely as he can, throwing them away from him like emotions he doesn't want to feel.

He no longer spends every second thinking of his parents, but the pain can still hit him, unexpectedly and without warning, rushing over him like an avalanche he can't avoid. He finishes dismantling the stones until there's no more evidence that a pile ever existed. He kicks savagely at the dirt because he still sees what used to be there.

He's crying; he didn't realize it. The tears come, and he doesn't stop them. They're healing tears, like rain washing away pain. Loss has taught him to cry. He does not know it, but learning that lesson has made him more of a man than anything else.

* * *

"What is it?" asks Damian, pointing to the small pyramid of stones in the middle of the pathway.

"It's to commemorate coming here. I put one for every year I made the trip, and now you can pick one for this year." Bruce is ready for his son to turn disdainful, but instead, Damian dutifully goes to the side of the dirt trail and sifts through a pile of rocks before he finds a round, flat stone and brings it to his father.

"Is this acceptable?"

Bruce looks down at him, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. Always so serious, his child. But he doesn't laugh. "If you chose it, it's perfect," he says. Damian places it gently on the pile, making sure not to disturb any of the other stones.

"Father?" he asks, "why aren't there more of these? I thought you said you came here every year."

Bruce clears his throat. "The year your grandparents died, I started a new pile. I—got rid of the old one." Almost to himself, he adds, "It's ironic, but some of these stones were probably in that original stack."

"It's like Pennyworth says," Damian puts in, and his father looks down at him with surprise.

"What do you mean?"

"Sometimes, when I have nightmares about—what happened, he says it's just my brain trying to make sense of something that's a part of me, so I don't have to be afraid anymore. He says you can't get away from things. You have to make peace with them."

A host of recollections flash through Bruce's mind, memories of being a boy who had nightmares of his own. "That's right," he agrees. "He knows what he's talking about."

Sometimes, Bruce wakes in the morning and finds Damian at the end of his bed, curled into a ball. He's glad to know what the boy does the other nights when his sleep is disturbed. He can imagine it very well—Alfred quietly simmering warm milk on the hot plate in his bedroom while a frightened little boy sits on the end of his bed, the butler's quiet, unhurried movements themselves a comfort. "Would you like to talk about it?" would be the question, and it would be met by a tense shake of the head no. That wouldn't deter Alfred, though. He would talk about something else, something normal, like the New York Yankees batting average or the Gotham City street grid. Finally, when the milk had done its job and the boy's eyes were closing, Alfred would no doubt pick him up and carry him back to his room, sitting beside him and stroking the hair on his forehead until he sleeps again. Bruce knows; he remembers.

Father and son walk on in a silence that feels companionable.


	72. Worry

**Worry**

Alfred miscalculates. He doesn't mean to get so close to the boy, but that's how he sees Bruce lose his footing. For a second, he feels like his heart stops. Then, he looks down and sees his charge sliding uncomfortably down a steep hill—uncomfortably, but not harmfully. He sets up camp at the top of the hill, starting a fire and making tea in his travel thermos, checking every once in a while to make sure Bruce is all right.

The boy is floundering a bit, but he's not seriously hurt. Alfred gives him an hour. By then, it will be dark, and he will rescue if rescue is needed. But he doesn't think it will.

The butler has no idea what Thomas Wayne would have done. He's pretty sure Martha would have banged him over the head with her handbag for leaving her son at the bottom of a hill. But he's right; he feels it. The boy wanted to be alone, and he wasn't wrong. He's half boy, half man these days, and it's right for him to seek independence.

Still, knowing intellectually doesn't mean Alfred isn't worried. He has to remind himself a hundred times that the boy is all right. As he sips his Assam, he tries to resign himself to the fact that it's always going to be this way. Like it or not, he's always going to worry about Bruce Wayne, no matter how old he gets.


	73. Uphill

**Uphill**

One moment, Bruce is walking along the path, thinking of his father. The next, he's head over heels over head, flying down a hill. As soon as he reaches the bottom and collects his thoughts, he realizes his ankle is sprained. Not broken. He's a doctor's son, and he can tell. He looks up toward the top of the mountain of dirt, wishing, fancifully, that he could fly.

But he can't, and he's alone, and needs must. _I can do this_, he says to himself, beginning to climb, hand-over-hand. The progress is slow, and his ankle smarts, and he wants to give up. But he doesn't.

At first, he imagines Thomas Wayne next to him. That doesn't quite work. His father would have made him lie still so he could check his ankle and call a stretcher. No, the way he keeps going is by imagining Alfred.

_Come on, you. Don't give up. You can do better than that. _The butler's voice is the one he needs. It propels him upward, keeping him moving when he wants to slow down.

It's how he's lived, these past few months, how he's gotten up every morning, done his schoolwork, added to his files. How he hasn't sunk into the depression that wanted to consume him. It's because of Alfred. Every day has felt like an uphill slog, but every day has been filled by the butler's presence, stoic and encouraging and quietly comforting.

* * *

"Watch your footing," says Bruce as he and his son approach the dirt hill that had once been his nemesis. "I fell here, a long time ago."

Damian looks up at him, his features alive with curiosity. "Did you get hurt?"

"Just a sprained ankle," Bruce answers. "Alfred didn't rescue me. He made me do the climb back up myself, but he watched to make sure I was all right. That was—I'm very grateful." His son watches him for a moment, as if he's trying to imagine his father as a young boy who would have cared about a sprained ankle, instead of a fighter who could endure ten times that amount of damage without weakening.

"I wasn't like you," Bruce continues, trying to explain. "I didn't learn to fight until my parents died. I wasn't brought up for it. I was taken care of."

Damian stares down into the ravine for a few seconds. "I can't remember anyone helping me when I got hurt. Except—" he turns, and his father waits patiently. "Except for you and—and the others. You all came for me."

"That's right," Bruce agrees. "We came for you."

The boy mutters a curseword under his breath, and Bruce raises a surprised eyebrow. "What was that for?"

"Nothing," Damian mutters, and his father lets it go.

* * *

**A/N: I think this parallel is working for me because, as a lot of people have pointed out, David Mazouz plays young Bruce Wayne _a lot _like Damian Wayne.**


	74. Sunrise

**Sunrise**

Alfred is ready for the anger that greets him when Bruce's head rises above the top of the hill, but it evaporates quickly when confronted with a sandwich, the boy's favorite tea, and an overcoat to shield him against the chill.

The butler surprises himself with the vehemence of his desire for Bruce to want to stay until sunrise. It's the reason he came. It wasn't just about protecting the boy physically. It was about being there so he didn't have to confront the new day alone.

They have confronted more than a hundred new days since Thomas and Martha Wayne breathed their last. The boy and the man have wept and fought and argued and loved. They have lost each other and saved each other.

Alfred spends the night awake, the boy's head a comforting weight on his shoulder. When dawn finally breaks, he feels the meaning of it pierce him like a knife. He is not given to symbolism. His mind is wedded to the here and now. But he feels the weight of the new day that belongs, not to the Wayne family, but to whatever he and the boy have become—to a father who has never had a child and a son who has lost his parents.

The man and the boy are singular no more.


	75. Right

**Right**

Bruce feels as if he's been climbing for his entire life and then some. His muscles burn, his joints ache, and he's freezing and hungry. Not for the first time, he regrets taking the hike. He should have known it would never work without his father.

A tell-tale smell assaults his nostrils—fire, and close by. He climbs more quickly, pushing his head above the cliff and finding a bonfire, presided over by a calm-looking Alfred Pennyworth.

If he didn't have a sprained ankle, he'd be tempted to run over and punch his butler as hard as he can. As it is, he's reliant on the man for physical support, which Alfred freely provides. As he thaws by the fire with food and tea in hand, Bruce finds his equilibrium returning.

This time, it's better than it was before, because he's not alone.

Alfred is not Thomas Wayne. It is not tradition for Bruce to fall asleep on his butler's shoulder, but he does anyway, the man's overcoat across his shoulders and the feeling of Alfred's scratchy wool sweater against his cheek. His last thought before he drifts off is that he's proud that he conquered the hill, but he's even more proud that Alfred is proud of him.

When he awakens the next morning, it feels right. He doesn't think about what's missing. He thinks about the warmth of the fire and the beauty of the sunrise and the comfort of having his butler next to him.

He will come again next year, but that time, he will ask Alfred to come along.

* * *

"This is where we make a fire and settle in for the night, so we can watch the sunrise tomorrow," Bruce says, taking his backpack off his before sitting down on the ground with his back against a tree.

"Do we have to stay here?' Damian asks, clearly agitated. "This is stupid."

"We don't have to," Bruce says mildly. Picking his battles was something he'd learned to do since the first day Dick Grayson had walked through the door of Wayne Manor. "But," he adds, "that's not what you were saying two hours ago."

Damian doesn't respond for a long time. Instead, he paces back and forth in front of his father, deep in thought. "Family is only a matter of survival," he finally begins in a monotone. "Feelings are not important. Dependence on family gets us killed. We fight alongside our family. We don't need them. We don't love them."

"Whomever said that to you was lying to you, Son," says Bruce evenly, not wanting to agitate his progeny further.

"I—used to repeat it every morning," says Damian, not looking at him. "He made me."

"Your grandfather?"

Damian nods, his gaze fluttering over to Bruce. "I—let myself get attached. It's not right. It's weak." Bruce smiles sadly, remembering when he'd been a young boy who'd just lost his parents, who'd let himself think the very same thing for a while.

"Why do you think we came back for you, Damian? Why didn't we just let you die?"

The small boy drops down into a crouching position on the ground, his arms around himself protectively. "You wanted to make me a better son, so that I wouldn't be weak and get killed the next time."

His father raises an eyebrow. "Is that what you really think? That it was because I thought you weren't a good enough son? If so, let me tell you something. When I went to rescue you, I didn't know if it would work, and I knew that even if it did, you might be different—you might never walk or talk again. None of that mattered to me, Damian. You're _my _son. Whatever you are is good enough. And another thing, loving people and letting them love you isn't a weakness—it makes you stronger than you ever could have been on your own."As the sun sets, Damian stares at Bruce, as if he's trying to weigh the words of his earlier life against the assertions of the man who's become his hero.

"Damian, do you think Alfred cares how powerful you are?"

The boy slowly shakes his head no.

"Right after your grandparents died, I decided that I didn't want to love anybody either. I thought it was depending on them that had hurt me. But it wasn't. I couldn't live without people, as much as I wanted to. I finally realized that love is what gives us real power. Alfred is the one who taught me that. Not a fighter or an assassin or a soldier. A butler."

Bruce is used to Damian's mercurial moods, but even he is surprised when his small son crosses the space between them by the flickering light of the fire and curls up on his lap, his head pillowed on his father's chest.

"Go to sleep," Bruce says softly, wrapping his arms around his little boy. "I'll wake you up at first light."


	76. Seeing

**Seeing**

The boy wears a suit well. There's no denying it. Alfred sees Thomas Wayne in the set of Bruce's shoulders and the resoluteness of his purpose.

He also sees himself-in the boy's insistence on justice, regardless of danger. He could force Bruce to stay home, to give up his crusade. He could, but he won't. He's too proud of what he sees.

When they reach Wayne Enterprises, he sees fear in the eyes of every single person sitting around the cold oak table, but there is no fear in the boy's eyes. He wonders if Bruce himself has realized it yet—the key to conquering his fear is to fill himself up with purpose, to eat and sleep righteousness until there's no room left for anything else.

The boardroom is on fire, but no one except Alfred can see it.

He has always lived in the moment, never let himself predict an uncertain future. But he sees it now. Bruce grows taller by the day and more single-minded in his aims. A spark ignites a forest, and someday the boy will burn the city until the chaff is gone and only purity is left.


	77. Fixing

**Fixing**

Terror and purpose are incompatible.

The boy breathes deeply of the filtered air that fills the backseat of his car. He would have taken his place in front with Alfred, but it wouldn't do for the Wayne Enterprises board to see Thomas Wayne's heir getting out of the front seat.

Bruce had expected to be nervous, but as he walks up to the large, old door of the building, all he feels is resolve, like an anchor, keeping the butterflies from flying around his stomach. He is unafraid.

The adults stare at him, as if they're one, many-eyed beast. Their words, dismissive and derisive, irritate him, but they do not shake him. He is more than they think. He knows, and in time, they too will know.

_I'm Bruce Wayne_, he thinks. That name used to mean fear. Now it just means purpose.

He angers them. He doesn't care. One person isn't angry, and it's the one person he cares about. Alfred drives him home in silence, and the city looks different as he watches it flash past his window. It's not such a mystery any more. There are connections. He's starting to see them. Some day, when he's tied up every loose thread, Gotham will be his.

He'll give it back. But only when he's finished fixing it.


	78. Realizations

**Realizations**

Reggie is a ghost, or perhaps a mirror, the embodiment of a part of Alfred's life that he likes to keep neatly tucked away in a wardrobe in his mind. It's certainly not a part of him he ever intended Bruce Wayne to see, not even once.

And yet, here is the ugliest side of his id, walking around free, with a swagger and a chip on his shoulder. No one else knows how close the butler comes to truly losing his temper when he sees Reggie sparring with the boy, trying to erode the foundation of civility he's tried to build.

But Bruce Wayne is more, Alfred realizes. He's become far more than a frightened boy and much stronger than a weak child. Unfortunately, that realization doesn't come until his ward his kneeling over him, trying to save his life.

He touches the boy, and his last thoughts before reality slips away are a jumble of remembered images and smellls—gunpowder and steel and the taste of his own blood. But it isn't Reggie he sees next to him in the trenches; it's Bruce Wayne.


	79. Instincts

**Instincts**

_Alfred is dying._

The boy's instinct is to freeze. But what does Alfred always say? "Learn to go against your instincts, Master Bruce. When everything in you is screaming to do one thing, but you do something else, that's when you know the training is working." He looks around for something to stop the blood. He can't keep himself from making noise, but he forces himself to move.

_The ambulance takes eight minutes and nineteen seconds._

He's hyperventilating. He knows how it feels. Soon, the world will go black around him, and he won't have to feel the anxiety of waiting. But his butler's voice comes unbidden to his mind. "Breathe, Master Bruce. Count the seconds. Make yourself time each intake and outflow until your head clears. There's nothing to be helped by making yourself faint, nothing at all." At first, it had taken Alfred breathing with him to give him something to focus on, but now he can do it himself. By the time he sees the lights of the ambulance, he's steady and calm.

_Surgery is immediate._

There's no point in saying anything; the butler is unconscious, but Bruce grasps Alfred's hand and whispers in his ear as they rush to prepare him for the surgery that will attempt to prolong his life. "I love you" is all that seems appropriate at a time like this. Tears sting the boy's eyes, and he wants to cry them, but there is a crowd of people in scrubs around him, and they all know who he is. "Don't let them see you cry," Alfred always said. Not in public. He can't afford to show them a vulnerable child. They need to see a Wayne. He squares his shoulders and walks toward the private waiting room, his jaw clenched as tight as he can get it.

_Officer Gordon comes three hours and ten minutes after the butler has been pronounced in stable condition_.

Alfred would not want him to trust Jim Gordon. The butler doesn't trust him, doesn't want Bruce to put any more faith in his abilities. But some instincts are harder to overcome than others, and the boy pitches himself into the older man's arms as soon as he sees him. He needs the secure comfort the hug brings more than he needs food or sleep. When the cop is gone and he sits beside Alfred's bed, he reflects on his actions, and he doesn't regret them. He's man enough to think Alfred Pennyworth is wrong sometimes.


	80. Danger

**Danger**

Alfred wakes up sure, sure that he was right all along: Trust no one in Gotham, and keep Bruce as close as possible. It's a claustrophobic philosophy, but then again, he's still alive, and he's a man who should have been dead many times over.

Still, he doesn't expect what happens when he tries to get out of bed, only to be summarily ordered to rest by the boy he should be serving. He has seen in Bruce the petulance of a boy; this is the first time he sees the resolve of a man.

There's a danger in Bruce Wayne. He's sensed it and known it. After all, it's what links them by more than employment and years.

The butler settles back into his hospital bed and watches the fire leave his ward's face. Perhaps, he thinks, he should be worried that the boy has a furnace inside him. But he's glad. Bruce will need it to survive Gotham. That's the plain truth.


	81. How it Is

**How it Is**

He had no idea how it is.

He'd thought he would never forgive Selina Kyle. She's lied to him, belittled him, drawn him in, and pushed him out. But when she comes, there is no thought of forgiveness. It's done before he even thinks about it. Done when he sees her eyes and hears her voice and feels her concern. He couldn't be angry if he tried.

There are some people who are not meant to be enemies, for whom conflict comes just before the bliss of reconciliation. He wouldn't know how to say it, but he feels closer to her than ever before.

She's lairy, and he never will be. He's lives in the deep dark; she flits like a nine-lived cat, light-footed on the edges of the world. They are not suited at all, but then, the yin is not suited to the yang, is it? And yet, they can't be apart.

She is too close to be a friend; he is far too young to be a lover. But she will never leave him be, and he will never let her go. That's just how it is with the boy and the cat girl.


	82. Killing Floor

**Killing Floor**

Bruce Wayne is not a killer.

He is angry, so much so that he frightens himself. He is violent; only Alfred's lessons have given him a way to make his outbursts count. He is troubled, at times, and he is sad.

But he is not a killer.

He didn't know he wasn't. Seeing Alfred's body bleeding out on the Wayne Manor carpet had reminded him, with vivid technicolor clarity, of the night his parents lost their lives. And he'd wondered; if it came down to it, would he really mind killing those responsible? He had thought, many times, that he wouldn't.

And then Selina Kyle pushed a man out a window.

Not a nice man. Not a good man. Not even a pitiable man. Just a man willing to do anything to get what he wanted, a man who'd had the priceless treasure of Alfred Pennyworth's friendship and thrown it away like a bad penny.

An expendable man?

Not an expendable man. It was in that moment that Bruce Wayne realized no life is expendable, no matter how despicable. He felt it course through his body, and he knew it to his core. In those moments between life and death decisions, what matters is the sacredness of life, and it is not something he's willing to take.

"Thou shalt not kill," he remembers from the Bible, and now it makes sense. Killing is a violation so deep that it would change who he is inside, and he will not let that happen. He is not, and never will be, a killer.


	83. All Right

**All Right**

Alfred wonders when he stopped being the supplier of comic books and Legos and started being the one who sends clothes around to the girl destined to be his young master's date. It should be Thomas and Martha Wayne who watch their son emerge, dressed to the nines, looking far older than his years. It should be Thomas who straightens his tie, Martha who insists on taking a picture.

Instead, it is the butler who waits at the foot of the stairs. "Is this all right?" Bruce asks seriously.

Alfred gives a single nod. "Quite all right."

And yet, the boy smiles at him, basking in his approval, and the older man recalls that there is more than one way to raise a son. He is not Martha or Thomas Wayne, but it's all right now. Bruce understands.

Alfred still marvels at how easy their relationship has become, not the Bruce Wayne will ever be easygoing. But somehow, through the agony, they have come out all right after all, and no one can take it away from them.

The butler drives his charge to the party and remembers his first time driving the boy's parents, when they were young and in love and happy. More than anything, he wants Bruce to see days like that, but Gotham is not kind to those who are happy. It never has been, and he supposes it never will be.


	84. Partnership

**Partnership**

It is Alfred who taught Bruce Wayne to dance.

It is Alfred who showed him how to hold a partner so that she feels secure but not trapped, how to sweep across a floor in time to the music while still giving his full attention to the woman in his arms.

To look at him, you would not think Alfred Pennyworth is a dancer, but he's a very, very good one.

"Dancing is about teamwork," the butler had always said.

"How would you know?" Bruce had asked, knowing full well there were women in the butler's past and trying to goad him into talking about them.

"Never you mind," Alfred had rejoined. "Just remember, women like dancing with a man who cares more about the partnership than about being in charge."

He does remember. He remembers it while he's gliding across the floor with Selina Kyle in his arms. He has no idea why she knows how to ballroom dance, but why shouldn't she? She knows nearly everything else.

But some forms of dancing don't happen on ballroom floor. He speaks to their target; Selina pickpockets him. When all is said and done, their mission is accomplished, and he's not sure whether he enjoyed the waltzing or the mission more.

Alfred serves him hot chocolate before bed, and as Bruce pulls off his tie, he looks up at the butler. "You were right about partnership, Alfred."

"I know," the older man answers. "I'm right about a lot of things, Master Bruce."


	85. Good Man

**Good Man**

Lucius Fox's associates think of him as smart. They think of him as resourceful and efficient and capable. He gets the job done, and that's what it means to work at Wayne Enterprises.

They don't know that he's good, and they don't know that he's kind.

There's something in the boy's face that reminds him of his own goodness, but even more, it reminds him of Thomas Wayne's. He cannot speak freely, but he wants to, more than anything he's wanted in ages.

When Bruce is gone, he goes casually to his assistant. "Lars, what is Bruce Wayne's living situation?"

His blond secretary clicks through a few computer screens. "Looks like the butler, Pennyworth, is his sole legal guardian."

"Good," Fox intones. He likes Alfred Pennyworth because Thomas Wayne did.

Lucius Fox's associates know that he's loyal. What they don't know is where that loyalty is based, and it's in a name, not a corporation.

He liked Thomas Wayne, and he likes Bruce Wayne. The father was a good man, and the son is headed the same way.


	86. The Beginning

**The Beginning**

Everything begins when the portal opens.

Boy and man stand together. Butler and master. Father and son. Protector and protected. Alfred Pennyworth and Bruce Wayne, facing the unknown together.

They have been together and apart, friends and enemies, separate and finally forged together into something new, a relationship that will stand the test of time and pressure of evil and danger and pain.

It is fitting that when everything changes, they are together to see the world made new, forged in rock and hope and mystery. The solution to the boy's quest and the man's need to guide him on his way.

They do not know that this is when they become more than names, more than residents of a city dark with grime and corruption and hate.

This is when "Butler" becomes synonymous with something far more powerful, and "Master" becomes a cloak for a name millions will fear.

History is lived an experienced, not read as it occurs.

The feet that once pounded toward the open arms of a grief-stricken butler are still now, as the boy becoming a man beholds the secret that will change his life. The man who once struggled to find his place in the mind and heart of the boy is at rest now, safe in the knowledge that what is between them cannot be broken. They neither of them feel fear.

The portal is not the end of anything. It's the beginning of everything.

* * *

**A/N: This concludes the chapters related to Series 1. I hope you're as excited as I am about Series 2 premiering!**


	87. Explosive

**Explosive**

Secrets are time bombs lingering in the shadows, ticking, waiting to explode.

Alfred is torn, torn between his desire to keep his charge safe from harm and his relief that the boy has found something to mitigate the grief of disappointment in the father he idolized.

He's a butler, not a robot. He has a heart. And sometimes he can't help but follow it.

As he sits alongside Bruce, his calloused fingers doing what they recall so well, he can't help but picture the last time he made a bomb—in a godforsaken jungle in south Asia. He'd always been good with his hands, good at not mucking it up, when mucking would mean death. His mates had always made him do the dangerous parts.

He does them now, unhesitatingly. He feels the nervous energy of the body next to his. He's not surrounded by hardened soldiers, special ops veterans who would joke about instant death while he did his work. Instead, he looks over and sees the wide eyes and thin face of the boy who is still a child, still too young to know the world for what it truly is.

Finally, when it's all finished, there's a moment of pure joy. Instead of a bomb meant to kill an enemy, the explosion brings happiness to Bruce's face that Alfred hasn't seen in months. He lets himself enjoy it, but only for a second.

He's still worried, because secrets are secrets for a reason, and sometimes, finding them out can make the whole world explode.


	88. BOOM

**BOOM**

Boom is the sound of a bomb going off. It's the smile on your face when the dust clears and you see that the door between you and the answer is shattered.

Boom is the feeling of finding the thing you've been looking for, the culmination of all the hours of obsessive research to which you've given your life.

Boom is the burn in your nose from the chemicals and your butler's offer of a handkerchief to cover your mouth, the butler who made sure you didn't kill yourself while you were making a bomb.

Boom is the silence of temporary deafness from the noise, a moment of sheer, silent glee as you feel yourself yelling, but the sound takes longer to reach your ears than usual.

Boom is the bursting inside that comes from the agonizing curiosity of wondering what you will find beyond the door, what secrets lie where you've never been.

Boom isn't tomorrow any more. Boom is the shouted cry of today.


	89. The Guardian

**The Guardian**

_After great pain, a formal feeling comes __–_

_The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs __–_

_The stiff Heart questions __'__was it He, that bore,__'_

_And __'__Yesterday, or Centuries before__'__?_

In a split second, Alfred makes the decision he doesn't want to make. He sees the determination in the boy's eyes, and he destroys the thing that holds the key to everything Bruce has hoped to find.

The boy is angry. The butler understands and accepts it. He has done the unforgivable, but if he hadn't done it, he couldn't have forgiven himself. Bruce's safety is more important than his happiness or his favor or anything else.

That doesn't make it any easier to bear. Alfred is too much of a father now. He can't be objective any more. The child's anger pierces through him like a winter's inescapable chill. He sees tears in the boy's eyes, and he hates himself for being the one who put them there.

Alfred Pennyworth has fought and killed and done things he's never told anyone about. Nothing else was like this. Nothing else made him feel as much like his heart is ripping in half and hemorrhaging.

_The Feet, mechanical, go round __–_

_A Wooden way_

_Of Ground, or Air, or Ought __–_

_Regardless grown,_

_A Quartz contentment, like a stone __–_

"Alfred, you're fired."

The words hit him like a punch to the gut, followed by a flat dulness. He'd expected anger, rage even, but he had not expected this.

After all, it was he who held the sleeping infant Bruce Wayne night after night while his parents lived their glittering lives. It was he who had taught the little boy to tie his shoelaces and and fold a pocket square. He was the one who had gotten the first look at the boy's school reports, who had made tea and toast for him every time he'd been ill.

More than that, he was the one who had sheltered Bruce while the storm of loss howled around them, trying to steal the boy's soul. It was Alfred who had stood firm against the darkness, fighting for the boy when the boy had no strength to fight for himself.

He had thought their bond was unbreakable. He now realizes he was mistaken.

_This is the Hour of Lead __–_

_Remembered, if outlived,_

_As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow __–_

_First __– __Chill __– __then Stupor __– __then the letting go __–_

Alfred sits at the train station, waiting to leave the city, but he will not leave Bruce Wayne on his own. The boy may not want him, but he will not give up on his charge so easily. If he is not allowed to be the butler, he will have to use other methods. First, he will make a show of leaving Gotham, in case Bruce decides to investigate. Then, he will return as quickly as he came and become the boy's protector from afar since Bruce no longer wants him close.

At first, in his grief, he'd considered leaving for good, but his final conversation with the boy had irrevocably swayed him against it. Bruce was proud and stubborn, but he was a frightened child, and he still needed his guardian, whether he was willing to admit it or not.

As the butler waits to put his plan into motion, he hears a familiar footfall, and the heir to the Wayne fortune takes a seat on the grimy station bench beside him. Alfred smiles to himself when he sees that Bruce has a jacket on—he's forever reminding him to wear one against the cold.

The words don't really matter after that, once the pain is gone, let go and replaced by forgiveness. But Alfred is not stupid, and he extracts a promise of obedience from the boy, and he sees the Bruce means it. Of course, his ward isn't stupid either, and he makes Alfred promise to undo the damage he's done. He doesn't want to agree, but he doesn't want to lose Bruce Wayne more.

They return home together, and that night, Alfred prepares dinner as he always does and finds Bruce in the newly-discovered cave. "Master Bruce," he says, kindly but firmly, "I hadn't planned to test our agreement so soon, but I really must insist that you eat something."

Bruce looks up from his work and nods. "Very well, Alfred." He eats a reasonable amount, much to the butler's satisfaction, and also leaves off working at a reasonable hour.

"Why are you staring at me?" the boy asks as he walks across the sitting room to go and get ready for bed.

"Well, Master Bruce, I'm just wondering how long this angelic streak is going to last," Alfred answers drily.

The boy acts like he hasn't heard, but he stops for a second and turns, looking at the butler. "I'm—not going to tell people you're my butler any more. That hasn't been right for a long time."

"Oh?" Alfred is confused. "But I am your butler."

"No," Bruce answers. "You're my guardian." He nods, and Alfred nods back. The change seems like a subtle one, but it isn't subtle at all. Alfred grins to himself for the rest of the evening. He's that pleased.

* * *

**A/N: The poetic stanzas are from Poem #372 by Emily Dickinson.**

**First off, when Bruce fired Alfred, I was ready to go through my TV screen and whack that child upside his precious little head.**

**But anyway, it doesn't make sense to me that Alfred would actually give up and leave easily. I think he might have wanted to make Bruce think he was going, but I don't see him actually giving up his job of protecting Bruce, especially since he's legally in charge of him. I think t was all intended to get Bruce to change his mind. **

**It's a very tiny spoiler (for one more day), but in a clip Fox released from the second episode of series 2, Bruce specifically introduces Alfred as his guardian instead of his butler, so that's where that came from. It seemed to me like a significant shift after their obedience contract, and if I'm not mistaken, it's not something Bruce has done before. **


	90. The Ward

**The Ward**

_There is a pain - so utter -_

_It swallows substance up -_

There was a night, and a man, and a gun, and since that time, Bruce Wayne has known fear and pain and anger he did not believe it was possible to feel. He has cried and cursed and wakened in the night to find Alfred at the foot of his bed, roused by the screams of his nightmares.

He does not believe that any of it prepared him for the blinding rage that consumes his mind when Alfred destroys the one thing that holds the answers he craves more than food and life itself.

The rock that has sustained him has become a destructive avalanche; he feels, suddenly, that his butler has become his enemy. What is the value of his safety measured against the chance to finally know and understand?

_Then covers the Abyss with Trance -_

_So Memory can step_

_Around - across - upon it -_

"Alfred, you're fired." He doesn't regret saying those words, but as he hears them come out of his mouth, he feels how strange and final they are.

The boy sits, tense and white-faced, when the butler says goodbye. _I am the master of Wayne Manor_, he says to himself, and he squares his shoulders. But he is uncertain.

It is possible to fire a butler. It is not possible to fire a friend or a family member or whatever it is Alfred has become. Sometimes Bruce feels closer to him than to what any word for father or uncle or brother conveys.

He has never known a time without Alfred. Not the good times, long gone, or the bad times since.

_As One within a Swoon -_

_Goes safely - where an open eye -_

_Would drop Him - Bone by Bone -_

The sound of the door closing behind Alfred is louder than it should be. It echoes in Bruce's brain like a ticking clock that won't stop.

He breathes deeply, thinking. What to do. Where to go. Who to hire.

But none of it matters. The boy finally realizes that you can't stop loving someone just because you're angry with them, and you can't stop wanting them and missing them just because you try.

Bruce runs across the house to his room and puts on his jacket; Alfred wouldn't want him to be out in the cold without it. He hastily goes to the kitchen to the cupboard with the old breadbox where Bruce knows his butler keeps a stash of emergency cash, hoping he didn't take it with him. Of course not, he would have considered it stealing. The boy takes two twenty-dollar bills, hoping it will be enough to get him to the station. He has no idea how much taxis cost; Alfred drives him everywhere.

He goes out to the road and sprints toward the city, growing winded after a while and breathing heavily, watching traffic pass. He's in luck. Soon, a yellow, official city taxi pulls up. The driver doesn't seem to recognize him.

"Train station," he sputters, and the car speeds off. It's not a long drive, and the fare is only fourteen dollars. Bruce gives the cabdriver both twenties, making the man's day.

As soon as he walks into the rundown building, the boy sees the back of Alfred's head. He's sitting on a bench alone, almost as if he's waiting for someone. Bruce dares to hope it might be him. He takes several deep breaths and composes himself, then plucks up the courage to step forward and sit down beside the man he can't bear to lose.

Bruce can tell in an instant that he's forgiven and that the butler will return. Leave it to Alfred to extort a promise that he'll be an obedient and dutiful ward from now on. But he doesn't mind. To keep Alfred, he would promise anything at all. The boy has a condition of his own, because he knows that if anyone can find a way to fix a computer that seems broken beyond repair, it's the man who broke it.

They shake hands on the deal, like men. But Bruce has never felt more like a child and never minded it less. A few moments of being alone were enough to show him that he never wants to experience it again. Without Alfred, he would fall off the edge of the world, and there would be no one to catch him.

That night, when he's going to bed, he tells Alfred the thing that's been on his mind all evening. It makes no sense for him to introduce the man as his butler. Butler was the word the world gave him for Alfred's job, but it's never been nearly enough to express who he is. "You're my guardian." It's a truth he could not accept for a long time, but he embraces it now.

He looks back once, after he's left the room, and he catches Alfred grinning to himself like he's just won the lottery. When he gets to his bedroom, he looks in the mirror and realizes he's smiling too.

* * *

**A/N: The poem is 599 by Emily Dickinson. **


	91. The Photograph

**The Photograph**

When all is said and done, Alfred remembers it the way battles are always remembered—blurs of fear, anger, adrenaline, and instinct. The boy lying dead is not Bruce Wayne. That is the thing, the most important thing.

It's a week or two later when he gets a manila envelope in the mail, addressed to him, not to his master. He takes out the flat, rectangular contents and finds a photo of himself with one hand around a gun, the other hand cradling the terrified Bruce against him.

_Alfred_,

_The benefit photographer took pictures of the whole thing as it went down, and we're using them for evidence. Thought you might want this one._

_Jim Gordon_

The butler sits in the front seat of the car, with nowhere to go until Bruce's school day ends, and studies every line of the picture. He can barely recall the moment it depicts, but he's proud nonetheless.

Alfred Pennyworth isn't really one for sentiment. He has few pictures or personal items in his room, choosing to let his mind be the casket of his memories. But he takes the photograph and measures it, then finds a suitable frame in an unused room of Wayne Manor and hangs it on the wall across from his bed.

He is more than a butler now, the crag-faced man with the un-posh accent. He's a Protector, with arms that can both break and heal. He's never liked a picture of himself more than he likes that one.


	92. The Purpose

**The Purpose**

There was a time when Bruce risked his life to save Selina Kyle. Now, without hesitation, he risks everything for Alfred Pennyworth. Self-preservation has been a hard concept for the boy to grasp, ever since his parents' deaths. He is not brave on his own account.

When it comes to those he loves, he is fearless.

Those watching the disaster at the benefit probably think that Bruce rushes into Alfred's arms because he's relieved he's escaped certain death and needs comfort. But that is not the case. He runs to Alfred because he's fiercely relieved that the butler is alive and unharmed.

The boy never gave the risk to himself more than a passing thought. It was the risk to Alfred that galvanized him into action, made him strong.

That's why, later that night, when Alfred puts large hands on his shoulders and forces him to meet his eyes, he can't lie. "What were you thinking?" the butler asks.

"I was thinking," Bruce answers seriously, "that I was going to save you."

"Don't you do that," Alfred answers gruffly. "Don't you try to save me. I'm supposed to save you."

Bruce stares into his face with dead seriousness. "I wasn't afraid, Alfred. I like saving people."

The butler shakes him lightly. "Don't ever do it again. Promise me."

"No," says Bruce.

"What happened to doing everything I tell you?" Alfred looks down at him, still standing close.

"I'm not going to stop," the boy answers. "You'll just have to teach me to do it right."


	93. The Sister

**The Sister**

"She's a little girl."

"She's a killer."

"She was scared, and she kept Bruce safe the only way she knew how."

"He wouldn't have been there if it wasn't for her."

"You don't believe that for a minute; you know exactly how stubborn he is."

"He's just a kid."

"So is she."

"But she's dangerous."

"A dangerous little girl who started crying the minute you slapped her."

"She's impervious to pain—that lairy waif probably hasn't cried in years."

"Admit it, Alfie. You saw it on her face."

"Don't call me Alfie. I always hated it when you called me that."

"Liar. It always made you smile."

"I wish you were here."

"No you don't. I'd be tempted to slap you myself."

"You never slapped anyone in your life."

"There's always a first time."

"Not—not now. Not for you."

"Oh, shut up. You know you see me every time my son gets cross or laughs like no one's watching him."

"I can't deny it."

"Alfie, he's as dangerous as she is. That's what you're really afraid of."

"He's just—he's still a little boy."

"And she's still a little girl. But you're right about one thing. "

"What thing?"

"Selina Kyle doesn't cry because she's in physical pain."

"Why then?"

"You've got to work it out for yourself. I'm just here in your mind."

—

After dark that windy night, a beat cop on Eighth approaches a girl in leather. "Selina Kyle?"

She wakes up instantly and starts running. "Come back!" he yells. "You're not in trouble. I have something for you." Cautiously, she peers behind her, and he holds up a small box and sets it on the ground. "I'll just leave it here."

She doesn't come back until he's far away, disappearing down the street, but he can't help looking back to see what's inside the parcel he was told to deliver.

Mittens.

From his distance away, Officer Yates can't see that the gloves the girl slides on her hands are made of cashmere and embroidered with tiny flowers, worth more than his favorite three pairs of jeans combined. Mittens that belonged to someone rich. Someone who would have wanted the little girl to have them.

He's also too far away to see the smile flit across the girl's face, a smile that says she knows exactly who sent the gift—and that she understands why.


	94. The Waif

**The Waif**

She sits on the wall, like a hawk, watching over the boy. He is hers. She puts no name to it, but he has belonged to her since the night his parents were murdered. It's not friendship. It can't be. She doesn't have friends. And it's not love. She swore off that years ago. But he belongs to her all the same.

Below, by the expensive car, is the boy's butler. He's tall and stern and strict, but he cares about the boy too. He will kill for his charge. That's what she respects most. She likes to think of the two of them, the cat and the butler, as the boy's two protectors, united in purpose if nothing else. The boy is—there is fire in him, but he is different. Weaker in a way. Stronger in a different way. She doesn't like to analyze too much.

Alfred Pennyworth's hand across her face is like an iron branding her with shame. It's not the physical pain she cares about; she's had far worse from people who claimed to love her. No, it's the instant realization that she cares what the stern butler thinks of her and the anger at herself that follows.

Alone has been a cloak of protection, but now it feels like a sheet of ice. She'd thought the boy was as alone as she is, but he has someone. Worse yet, he has someone she'd like to have, too.

She did not believe she could still be made to feel so profoundly alone.

—

That night, while Selina shivers against a building, the beat cop who usually leaves her alone goes crazy and comes over. She didn't even realize he knew her name. She runs, standard procedure.

He's too stupid to lie, so she actually turns around when he says he has something for her. Maybe it's from Ivy or one of the other kids. A small bribe would probably be enough to get Yates to pass anything off.

The box is plain and white, but it contains the most exquisite gloves Selina has ever seen. She runs through possibilities in her mind. They're not charity; nobody gives almost-unworn gloves worth that kind of money to a charity clothing drive.

She only knows one person with things that delicate and beautiful, the sorts of things she saw when she was staying at Wayne Manor and prowled the house at night while the boy and his butler were asleep.

But Martha Wayne is dead, and Bruce's attention is all taken up by the girl who looks like a porcelain doll. That leaves only one person to give her exquisite cashmere gloves to keep her hands warm in the frigid night, a person who, only a few hours before, had broken her heart.

She smiles, but she doesn't realize it. If she wanted to make amends with someone, that's exactly how she'd do it, too—stealthily, carefully, indirectly, but unmistakably.

The Cat and the butler might not be so different after all.


	95. Galavan

**Galavan**

The Galavans are not the sort of people who invite a butler to dine with them and his master, and that is how it should be. They are the boy's people—wealthy, intelligent, beautiful in the way only the rich can be. It is right for the boy to begin to move in the circles he must learn to inhabit.

And yet, they have not seen the cave under the mansion. They do not know about "lessons" in the kind of fighting that keeps one alive on the street. They are totally unacquainted with the dark, obsessive nights when the boy doesn't sleep.

Bruce Wayne should be at home with these people, but he is different. Alfred supposes he should be worried, but something in him is proud.


	96. Clouds and Earth

**Clouds and Earth**

Silver St. Cloud is like a frosty morning after a night of snow, when you come outside to find the ground covered with snowflakes, ethereal and magical. Her laugh is musical; she has been all the places Bruce has traveled, and she talks about them eloquently. She smiles at just right time, knows which fork to use, and never offends.

Selina Kyle is like the hard-packed ground that surrounds Wayne Manor, the earth that catches Bruce when he falls and startles him but does not harm him. She is sharp like the scent of the outdoors after rain as it wafts across the wind, suggesting life and vitality. She offends often, has been nowhere, and cares nothing about customs.

But there is a brittle hollowness to the girl with the golden hair; she is shallow like standing water, while the Cat has a depth of wisdom that is both cutting and invigorating. The boy knows that women are beautiful. He is learning that they are also mysteries who cannot be unraveled, even if you have a lifetime to try.

He likes Silver St. Cloud, but Selina Kyle makes him feel alive.


	97. Blood

**Blood**

The first time he caused the boy to bleed, Alfred almost couldn't keep going, not that he showed that side of himself to Bruce. Instead, he watched and waited, and instead of tears, he was met with a smile and a glint in the boy's eyes. It wasn't long before Bruce hit him hard enough to produce an answering cut on his lip. Alfred let him, not that Bruce would ever know.

Once, years before, Alfred had shed blood on purpose, pricking his finger so that he could mingle his blood with an army comrade's. Charlie, his best friend in the world, had died two weeks later.

He does not mingle his blood with Bruce's; he doesn't need to. They are bound with cords of every shape and size, happiness, sadness, and everything in between. It has been his habit to think of Bruce as a child, but as they stand, facing one another with bloody fists and visages, a man emerges, taller than he used to be, and braver.

They cease to be butler and master on the field of battle. They are simply Alfred and Bruce, two men bound by more than blood.


	98. Learning

**Learning**

All day long, Bruce sits in dusty, wood-paneled classrooms and learns facts. His school prides itself on being one of the highest-rated preps in the country. He doesn't much care. He has a near-photographic memory, and he could learn from the books in his father's enormous library. He only goes to school to appease his butler. He's finally learned that compromise is the way to live with the man who is not his mother or his father but is his Alfred.

Nighttimes and weekends are when he really learns, studying the kinds of things you can't learn in books. Stances, punches, how to stand still when your whole body is crying out for you to move. How to use pain as energy. How to incapacitate without maiming.

Alfred rarely tells him he's doing well, but he can see it in the man's eyes. He's putting on muscle, getting stronger. His breath doesn't go as quickly; he can hold the butler off for far longer than before. He was always cunning, and now he knows how to use his cleverness to rebuff a man twice his size.

Soon, he will be a fighter to fear. What then?


	99. The Honest Thing

**The Honest Thing**

Alfred, it turns out, does not like the silver girl.

It's strange how, with them side-by-side, Selina Kyle strikes him as the more realistic of the two, the more vivid. It shouldn't please him to bring Galavan's niece down a peg, but somehow it does. Her sing-song, studied voice begins to grate on him, the slinking fluidity of her manner. He had thought he did not trust the cat-girl, but she makes sense in a way Silver St. Cloud does not.

He is a suspicious man; he has learned to be, and the smothering friendliness of the Galavans has started to suggest questions to his mind. He wants the boy to be happy; he does not want him to become a pawn.

The butler remembers school lessons drummed into him years before, history lessons about child kings whose countries had to be managed by their advising nobles for years until they came of age. He feels the weight of that pressure sometimes, of the Wayne fortune and name, the legacy Bruce must eventually inhabit.

Strangely, his favorite moment of the uncomfortable meal he serves is when Selina makes a less-than-veiled reference to his last encounter with her. It's the only real part of the whole evening, the only honest thing that occurs.

Honesty may be uncomfortable, but it's real in a way the simpering smiles of the billionaire's niece are not. Bruce is complicated, but he is not deceitful, and he has not learned, through disillusionment, to be suspicious. Alfred wishes he could keep that eventual lesson from being taught.


	100. A Long Way

**A Long Way**

It's late in the evening, and Bruce comes home from the Galavan house with confusing thoughts about girls and life and what it means to be a man with an endless hunger for justice that cannot be satiated. Neither he nor Alfred speaks until he comes home and takes his seat on the sofa in his favorite room to wait for the tea his butler unfailingly provides.

"Alfred, what are these?" On the table in front of him are stacks of leather-bound volumes. He reaches out and picks up the one nearest him.

The butler pokes his head back into the room. "I took all of your family photographs and put them into albums chronologically. I thought you might like to look at them." He disappears down the hall, and Bruce opens the book in his lap.

He finds pictures of himself at seven, smiling and wearing a ski jacket, with his parents holding tight to his hands. He remembers that trip to Switzerland, making snow angels and listening to his mother laugh late into the night.

He finishes that album and picks up another, finding much earlier photos of his mother in the hospital with a red-faced baby in her arms and his father with a tired grin on his face. There's only one picture with Alfred in it, but it's a photo he's never seen of a younger-looking butler holding his infant self close with a look of pride that is unmistakable even in a picture that has been discolored by years.

He chooses another book and finds the endowment ceremony for the Wayne Wing of Gotham General Hospital. The pictures are covered with archival film, so he lets his fingers trace the smiles on his parents' faces and wishes he could will them back into existence in front of him. He is starting to remember their very lives as snapshots, beautiful memory vignettes that contain bittersweet nectar that he can only let himself drink occasionally, or he would get drunk on the past and forget the present altogether.

The next book he picks up does not have his parents in it. It's of his latest trip abroad, the one with only himself and his butler. There is no hand-holding and no laughter. Most of the pictures are of him only, but there is one of him and Alfred. He remembers when it was taken, the night they'd spent at the hotel after Alfred had shut up the house, just before they'd flown back to Gotham.

"Let me take a picture of you and your son. You're both so handsome." The hotel concierge had been a young woman with red lips.

"He's—" Alfred had started to explain, but Bruce had stopped him with a hand on his arm.

"That would be nice. Thank you." He'd handed her his smartphone, and she'd snapped a picture of the two of them in the lobby in front of an impressionist painting.

It's not a happy photo, but it makes the boy happy to look at it.

"Alfred," he says, as the butler comes back with the tea tray. "Remember this?"

"Of course," comes the answer.

"We've—come a long way since then," says the boy.

"Yes, Master Bruce, we have."

* * *

**A/N Happy Chapter 100! Thank YOU for coming this long way with me, and here's to 100 more. **


	101. Either Way

**Either Way**

The boy is pacing, agitated, intense. He has tears in his voice. Alfred can hear them, though he doesn't think Bruce yet realizes they're there.

This is one time the butler has a decided opinion: He does not trust Theo Galavan, and he does not believe the boy should sell his company. But he knows very well that this is exactly the sort of decision Thomas Wayne meant his son to make for himself. He refuses to give Bruce free rein in matters of personal safety, but when it comes to the money and the company, Alfred can only advise.

Soon enough, the tears make their way out of Bruce's eyes, and Alfred is glad to see that he doesn't try to hold them back. It's like a gift, knowing the boy is willing to cry freely in front of him.

"No, you're not wrong."

During Bruce's childhood, there were times Alfred had wished the boy had a different temperament, a personality that would be less apt to feel things so keenly and so heavily, a soul less prone to being hurt. Now, once again, he finds himself wishing the same thing for the sake of the weeping figure in front of him.

"Come here."

Alfred cannot protect Bruce from his internal agony, so he does the next best thing and pulls him close, holding him tightly and relaxing when the boy doesn't pull away. It's a long embrace; they haven't had one in a while. Alfred hugs him as tightly as he can without breaking him, wishing the world would be so kind.

When the boy's sobs finally quiet and he pulls away, Alfred sees peace behind his eyes. The butler will never fully understand Bruce Wayne, no matter how long he knows him, but somehow, at the right moments, physical comfort reaches deep into his core the way few other things can.

The boy does not thank him; that would be too formal. Instead, he smiles.

"Have you made a decision, Master Bruce?"

The dark head shakes. "No, but it's all right. You'll stay with me either way, right, Alfred?"

"Course I will."


	102. Just Enough

**Just Enough**

Bruce is confused, agitated, afraid. In the past, he would have hidden his feelings, tried to squeeze them down inside himself so that no one else would ever know about them. He has another response now, instinctive and instant. He tells Alfred everything.

Talking to Alfred is soothing, like being dehydrated and taking a long drink of water. There is no judgment in his butler's eyes and no reprimand for his indecisiveness. Alfred listens; he always listens. Then he answers—not much, but just enough.

Bruce had once thought it was childish to cry. Now it seems childish not to. He weeps for the biggest decision of his life and finds himself wrapped in Alfred's arms, warm and tight.

He lets his tears soak his butler's shoulder, then returns the embrace, wrapping his still-thin arms around Alfred's solid body, soaking up the physical affection like it's a drug he hasn't taken for far too long. Alfred does not push him away, so he stays like that a long time, until his fear completely drains away.

When Bruce finally pulls away, he feels different. Stronger. Ready to confront the choice that will decide his future. He does not know what he will do, but as long as he has Alfred, he can proceed without fear.

"You'll stay with me either way, right, Alfred?"

"Course I will."

Bruce is surprised by the intensity of the relief he feels. He will worry again, but for now it feels as if nothing can shake him. Not if he has Alfred Pennyworth.


	103. Stubborn

**Stubborn**

Alfred is actually shocked when he doesn't lose his temper. It represents some kind of personal growth, or maybe it's just wry resignation to the fact that he and the boy are never going to see eye-to-eye when it comes to safety.

He wonders, again, as he absently examines the hotel key in his hand, how much of a disciplinarian he should be. The answer comes when Bruce functionally grounds himself, stewing over his failed escape attempt and, no doubt, stoking the fires of his teenaged anger.

After a while, the butler takes a tea tray up to Bruce's room, even though it's late, and knocks lightly on the door. "I've got tea and iced biscuits for you if you're ready to be civil. I know you're not sleeping yet."

The boy opens the door and stands in the doorway with his arms folded. "Will you apologize?"

"No," Alfred answers simply.

"Neither will I."

"Didn't ask you to," says the butler, "but you should know that I'm not going to back down." Wordlessly, Bruce motions, inviting him into his spotless bedroom, and Alfred deposits the tray onto his desk.

"You're as stubborn as your mother," he mumbles.

"Thank you for the tea," Bruce says quickly, and as Alfred turns to go, he looks back, expecting to see an angry man. Instead, what he sees is a vulnerable boy. It's a good reminder that he's not conflicting with an associate; he's raising a child.

"Good night, Master Bruce. I'll never give up on you."


	104. Immovable

**Immovable**

Bruce actually isn't a bad liar; at least, judging by his success with most people, he isn't. It's just that Alfred Pennyworth has a different effect on him than anyone else. He's like a lie detector, and as much as Bruce thinks he wants to deceive him, when he sees the butler's face, the wind goes out of his sails.

Alfred is just so solid, so confident in his purposes, so authoritative. Bruce goes back to his room angry, not only because he's been thwarted this time, but because of the control he can't exercise.

It's a maddening paradox—to want a father, but not want to be told what to do. It's something all teenagers have to confront, but Bruce has to do it with a multi-billion dollar corporation, a family fortune, and responsibility beyond his years. The problem is, you can't be safe if you don't trust, and trust means letting go of some of the control he finds so precious.

Before he goes to sleep, he dips a biscuit into a cup of tea and realizes he's not angry any more. Hearing Alfred say he would never give up on him made him feel safe in spite of himself.


	105. Symbiosis

**Symbiosis**

Alfred doesn't mind taking a stab wound for the boy. He does mind taking a stab wound for Bruce acting like he's two decades older than he actually is. Infuriating, that boy. And wonderful.

"He's as brave as I am," the butler mutters, but what he really means is that Bruce is every bit as foolish as he is, every bit as willing to risk himself for a cause he believes in. It's possible to be bother admirable and idiotic—sometimes at the same time.

The butler has no idea what it's like to lose parents in childhood. The boy has changed, but it's not as if new characteristics have been added. No, the ones he already possessed have been amplified—the stubbornness, persistence, insistence that he's right.

His guardian's, however, have been amplified in response. He's always been a protector; now he's constantly vigilant against both threats from outside and threats from Bruce himself. Some people might find his life intolerable, but, well, it's the life he was born to have. He likes it, even when he's frustrated out of his mind.

The development of Bruce Wayne and the development of Alfred Pennyworth are inextricably entwined, for better or for worse.


	106. Calling

**Calling**

Bruce hadn't been sure, when he'd first read his father's letter, if he truly had a calling. He'd certainly been obsessed with finding his parents' killer, but he was old enough to understand that a calling meant something bigger than a personal mission.

It's only when he hears Silver tell the truth that he feels the rush that assures him beyond the point of doubt or ambiguity. He's outwitted someone bent on doing wrong, fully and completely, with every element of the plan he'd formed with Selina proceeding exactly as they'd planned.

It's not just relief, and it's not just about winning. It's about knowing that it _worked_, that out-thinking a and out-acting a liar is something he can do, something he can do extremely well, in fact.

Perhaps there's a reason he's obsessive and single-minded and old for his age, things he knows all too well. Maybe he shouldn't feel out of place and disconnected. Maybe he's meant to abandon himself to the rush of crushing the plans of those out to harm him and his city.


	107. Love

**Love**

Alfred doesn't always mean to hear what he hears.

This time, though, he's glad. This time he hears the boy explain to the lairy girl that what he said to one girl was meant for another, meant for her.

It hits Alfred in the gut that the boy is older than he likes to think—his thoughts are complex, and he can deceive. He's also capable of feeling the frothy, champagne-like bubbles of first love.

There's not much time to contemplate it all before everything breaks loose, and Alfred is again tempted to see Bruce as a child, dressed in white, ready to meet a fate that it takes a whole gang of policemen to save him from.

At the moment of rescue, he hugs the boy and feels his fragility, his slightness, his fear and desperation. Regardless of what he says after, Alfred knows that Bruce was terrified.

Once they reach the Manor, Alfred stops his charge with a hand on his shoulder. "Come to my room once you've cleaned up. I want to talk." Despite his devil-may-care attitude in the parking lot, the butler sees him flinch. He doesn't want Alfred to be angry at him, and his guardian finds that extremely gratifying.

It's late when he hears a polite knock at his door. "Come in, Master Bruce." He invites the boy into his sitting room, his turf. He wants his authority to show, subtly, but firmly.

"What did you want to talk to me about?" If Alfred wanted to be angry, there's no way he could manage it with those earnest eyes and striped pajamas staring at him.

"Sometimes I feel like I'm talking to the wall with you. I want to reiterate, Master Bruce, that we have an agreement. If you're going to go off on these insane crusades, I'll need you to tell me and let me help."

The boy is crossing and uncrossing his legs, fidgeting, a sure sign that he feels guilty. "But you'd have said no; you said no before."

"With very good reason," Alfred answers, "but that doesn't mean I wouldn't have helped if you'd asked."

"I'm—sorry," Bruce says, and the butler feels how much effort it takes. The boy has always hated admitting he's wrong.

"Come here." He motions Bruce over to sit next to him on his faded sofa; he wants to be closer. The boy does as he's asked, and Alfred turns toward him. "You're forgiven. You know I would go to the ends of the earth for you, no matter how much you frustrate me."

The boy twists his hands together for a few moments. "Alfred, I have something else I want to talk about—to ask you."

"Yes?"

"How do you know when you're in love—I mean, not just the thing where you like someone, but when it's real."

The butler briefly considers telling Bruce what he overheard, but he doesn't want to embarrass him, not when he's just on the cusp of understanding how things are between men and women. "Well, Master Bruce, the true test is time. It's not what you see on television or read in romantic books. It's about commitment. If you can love someone on their worst and best days, and if you can still care about them when they hurt you, you know you're getting there."

Bruce nods. "I just—wonder how she feels."

"You mean Miss Selina," Alfred ventures.

The boy nods, obviously relieved that he didn't have to say it himself. "She's so beautiful, Alfred, but I don't understand her. It seems like she's with me, and then she isn't."

"Women are like that," Alfred agrees. "But there's more to it. She's like a kitten, Master Bruce. She wants to whole world to think she's a ferocious cat, but she isn't. She's still a child, who's never had what you have—and I don't mean money and clothes—I mean parents and someone to take care of you. She's frightened that if she lets you in, you'll hurt her as terribly as everyone else has."

"How do you know that, Alfred?" Bruce asks.

The butler sighs. "I can read people, Master Bruce, but I misjudged her. I thought she was hard, but she isn't hard at all. I'm not going to argue with you about liking her. That's not how love works. If you truly care for her, give her time. If it's meant to be, she'll come to you when she's ready."

"Thank you, Alfred."

Bruce gets up to leave, but before he can, his guardian stands up and wraps him in a tight hug. "In all this talk about pretty girls, don't you dare forget how much I love you."

"I won't," answers his charge, smiling the smile that makes Alfred forget he's not a little boy any more.

* * *

**A/N: This chapter is for Fawkes Devaue, who requested it. Thank you for the idea.**


	108. Guilt

**Guilt**

Bruce feels a certain amount of trepidation. After the whirlwind of the past few days, he's been summoned to the private rooms of Alfred Pennyworth to answer for the crimes of deception, sneaking out, and nearly getting himself killed.

He's not afraid of Alfred objectively, but he hates disappointing his guardian, and he feels that he's let himself down, just a little. He knows he shouldn't have done it without his butler, even if he did have Selina.

Selina. As he washes his face and brushes his teeth, he thinks about talking to her, of being with her, about how much he wants to be her knight, but it seems like she's always rescuing him instead.

He wrenches his mind away from his pleasant thoughts and forces himself to think about making amends to his guardian, who would certainly be justified in being angry. Then again, Alfred doesn't get angry nearly as often as Bruce would expect. He's like a tiger who turns out to be a teddy bear, when it comes down to it, not that the boy would ever tell him that.

He enters Alfred's inner sanctum, which looks exactly as it did when he was seven and had been brought there to answer for the theft of his butler's gold pocket watch. "You're on your own with this one," his mother had said, bringing him, with the stolen loot, into Alfred's room and plopping him next to the butler on the sofa, which had been considerably less faded back then, just as Alfred had looked younger.

He'd handed the watch to Alfred with his eyes downcast, wondering what the butler would do and what his punishment would be. "I'm disappointed in you." Those words had chilled him at seven the way they still could when he was a teenager, and he'd cried. Of course, his butler hadn't let him cry alone and uncomforted. In about three seconds flat, he'd found himself on Alfred's knee with strong, forgiving arms around him. He couldn't remember if he'd been punished. That hadn't seemed to matter when all was said and done. What he did remember was his butler's soft voice saying, "I'll always love you, no matter what you do." That was what had stuck with him.

This time, he sits in the chair opposite the sofa and listens to hear how upset Alfred is, which turns out not to be all that much. The butler speaks to him like he's a man, but somehow, that makes him feel guiltier. So he apologizes, because it's the right thing to do, even though it doesn't feel good.

But then he feels much better, because he plucks up the courage to ask his butler the thing that's been eating at the back of his thoughts—the thing about love. And, as always, Alfred knows the answer. He always knows.

Bruce gets up to go, and he finds that he very much wants to be hugged. But he doesn't deserve to be, not after his actions, especially since he's already gotten one—right after he'd been sure he was going to die.

Alfred's arms feel as good as ever, as safe as ever, as they wrap tightly around him in a completely undeserved embrace. "Don't you dare forget how much I love you." Pure joy fills Bruce Wayne, banishing his guilt and his fear.

He smiles. "I won't."


	109. The Whole Point

**The Whole Point**

"Very good, Master Bruce."

Alfred doesn't offer praise lightly. The boy is improving. In fact, the butler believes he'd be able to best almost any child his age in a fight. He's still slight, but he's quick, and he takes to deceptive maneuvers easily.

The butler forces himself to snap out of his pleasing fantasy of Bruce Wayne beating up every single one of the entitled children at his school who stands in front of the Wayne car at the end of the day, talking in groups, and won't get out of the way.

"That's enough for today," he says, dropping his arms and breathing heavily.

"But you said I was doing well!" Bruce is covered in sweat and pulsating with determination, but Alfred is firm.

"It'll be dark soon, and I want you to spend at least some of the day remembering you're a child." The boy grimaces, but he leaves as instructed, knowing very well when his butler can and cannot be pushed.

After dinner, Bruce helps Alfred clear the dishes—he'd never allow it if company was around, but he appreciates the help when the two are alone. "Master Bruce," he says, "I bought a Blu-Ray set the other day that I think you might enjoy." The boy shrugs, but he doesn't object when Alfred turns on the large flat screen in the sitting room, brings him his evening tea and a blanket, and sits next to him on the sofa.

"The name's Sherlock Holmes, and the address is 221b Baker Street."

When the first episode ends, Bruce turns to him, grinning. "He's the best detective in the whole world!" It's a win, the butler figures. His ward doesn't usually get that excited about something as trivial as a television show.

"It's Dr. Watson I feel for. Must be hard to live with a genius who won't ever tell you what he's up to and pays no attention to his own health and safety. Hard to imagine," says Alfred in the driest possible tone.

Bruce leans forward to aim the remote and click over to the next episode. "But they'd neither one be ok without the other, would they?" he says quickly. "That's the point."

"Yes, Master Bruce," says Alfred, "that's the whole point." When the boy leans back, Alfred moves just a little closer and puts an arm around his shoulders.


	110. Eyes

**Eyes**

She is his eyes in the city.

The boy does not know the dangers she faces, prowling through the dumpsters and junkyards of the wealthy, climbing walls and roofs and lurking outside offices and above secret meetings. Words no one is meant to hear. Places no one is meant to go.

He only knows the information, the names and places she whispers to him when she stands at his upstairs window, jittery, shivering under her jacket. He tries to give her money; she does not take it. Payment is beneath her. She brushes a kiss onto his cheek, now and then, never when he expects it. That is her only compensation. Other than friendship, at least he thinks so.

She is like a cat, always, and cats come and go as they please. "Thank you." He is unfailingly polite. She is never polite. He doesn't care. The vehemence of his own innate drive toward propriety is matched only by his appreciation of brashness in others.

"How?" he asks. She knows about meetings the mayor has with his favorite advisor—a man with ties to the mob so tight you can practically see them wrapped around his neck. "How?" No one could know what they say, but she does.

"My business." She tilts her head. And it is like a business. She is a professional. If he has become a detective, she has become a spy. They are fire and ice. He burns with passion; she freezes with calculation.

"Come again soon?" He relies on her information. Perhaps he relies on her companionship, however fleeting, even more.

"When I have something." She is nonchalant, but she is smiling. She doesn't smile often.

"Bye."

She is gone, so fast he hardly realizes it.

* * *

A/N: Suffice to say, I thought it was a miscalculation on the Gotham showrunners' part to come back from a long hiatus and not advance the story of Alfred and Bruce, the main reasons the majority of viewers tune in. In spite of their omission, however, I was determined to give us all something to enjoy. I hope you like both new chapters. xo


	111. Ears

**Ears**

"I know you've been meeting with the boy." He is standing with his arms folded, staring down at the thin girl, panting from his sprint to catch her before she escaped from the property. She is pale; she looks hungry.

"Only because I meant for you to know." She meets his eyes with her own brash stare. "We both protect Bruce."

The butler nods. She has forgiven him; they have an understanding. "You give him information about the city. I want information, too. My own kind. Information about anyone who talks about the boy or about Wayne Enterprises. Anything that would compromise his safety. I have one job; you could help me."

"Fine," she says, holding out a hand. They shake on it.

"Come inside. I have food for you." She needs to eat. He would put her over his shoulder and carry her in, just to get some nourishment into her, but it's not necessary. She comes willingly, her hunger obviously propelling her forward.

He gives her one sandwich and then another. She eats vigilantly, watching him between bites. He tries smile, to be reassuring. She still unsettles him, but he has learned to value her loyalty. He takes the rest of the sandwiches out of the refrigerator and puts them into a bag, wordlessly handing it to her.

That's how it goes, from then on. She visits the boy, and Alfred waits for her. He acts as though the meals he gives her are leftovers, but in reality, he figures out what she likes and prepares it for her. Things that will keep. Things she can eat the days she doesn't come. They never thank one another. It's never necessary.

Always he studies her face for bruises, the way she carries herself for evidence of injury. Once, he bandages a cut on her cheek. Quickly, methodically, as if it's a war wound. She does not flinch or make a sound. Reflexively, he brushes a strand of hair out of her eyes, the way he would do for the boy.

"Don't get attached to me, old man," she says. "You never know what could happen in Gotham."

"Don't get attached to me, little girl," he retorts. She rolls her eyes, but she also wraps her arms around her own body self-protectively, as if she knows he isn't wrong.

"Come along." He walks out. They don't speak again until they reach the edge of the perimeter.

"Come again soon."

"When I have something." She is in dead earnest. He nods and watches her walk away, half-wishing he could convince her to stay within the safe environs of the manor, the place he once wanted her to leave with every fiber of his being.

But she can't be contained. Not by Alfred or anyone else.


	112. Switzerland

**Switzerland**

"Switzerland?"

"Switzerland."

Bruce doesn't regret his actions in the Galavan matter—much. Just enough that he's willing to refrain from fighting his guardian about going to their secluded villa in a place he used to enjoy.

"It's not a punishment, Master Bruce." Alfred is smiling, a little bit bemused. "I thought you liked it there. It'll be good for this business with the Galavans to have time to blow over."

"You're right, of course," Bruce answers mechanically, continuing to select the clothing he wants Alfred to pack for him.

His guardian moves noiselessly across the room and stands behind him, putting his hands on Bruce's shoulders. "Whatever you say about it, I know you were afraid," he says softly.

Bruce blinks quickly. He has tears forming in his eyes, but he doesn't know why. He hasn't cried in ages, and he isn't sad, but Alfred's words trigger memories of that night—of the crowd and the chanting and the knife and the sounds of yelling and scraping and running as his rescuers arrived to free him.

"I felt—alive," he says, with a quiver in his voice.

"It's possible to feel more than one thing at the same time," answers Alfred's growling purr as his fingers squeeze Bruce's thin shoulders.

The sensation grounds the boy, makes him feel anchored to the present, safe, calm. "Switzerland is a good idea." This time he means it.

Of course, a few days gone, and he's ready to return. Ready to continue his fight. Feeling close to death has made him even more eager to exact the vengeance that has become like a drug to him. It's abnormal for a child his age to feel this way; he knows, and he doesn't care.

What does it feel like to kill? He almost knows what it feels like to die.


	113. Killing

**Killing**

There's a look in Bruce's eyes that Alfred has never experienced. He has killed, many times, but always as a point of duty, as part of jobs he'd never wanted but been very skilled at performing. He will only kill now to protect the boy

Bruce's fire is different, chilling. He wants to kill. He wants to watch as the life drains from the man who gunned down his beloved parents and made him the slight, fierce, revenge-bound vigilante he's becoming.

Alfred is afraid. Not because of his ward, but for him. He does not want Bruce Wayne to turn into the kind of man who kills. The boy will never be like him, able to do his duty in a matter-of-fact, detached way. If he takes a life, he will never be the same.

Alfred resolves to to his duty once again. There is no joy in killing, but he will not see the boy a murderer. It keeps him up at night to imagine the horror on Martha Wayne's face at her son's bloodthirst. Thomas Wayne would have understood. He'd been like his son, able to kill only when personal anger had burned white hot in him. As a result, soldiering had changed him forever, changes he would not have wanted to see Bruce ever experience.

The butler would have liked to keep the boy in Switzerland, to raise him alone in a villa high atop a mountain, where no one could ever bother either of them. But that life was not Bruce's destiny, and it was not what his parents would have wanted, for him to disappear from the world and from all potential for his wealth and intelligence to do good in it. Besides, the boy himself had asked, nearly every single day, when he would be allowed to return.

Home is not a place Alfred wants to be. Gotham is like the bellows that stoke Bruce's fire until he's blazing so hot even the butler has trouble containing him. But the fire is not uncontrollable yet. Alfred still has the power to direct, if not demand. So he does his level best to keep that fire from burning up anyone in its path, for the sake of the boy inside it, who, he's sure, will freeze at its center if he takes a life.


	114. Power

**Power**

Bruce has believed that the purest power comes from vengeance, believed it so strongly that it feels like a part of who he is, an element of his base code. A given.

But when he stands in front of the man who stole his world, he feels something new, an even more powerful truth that overtakes him like a wave: He has already learned that internal strength comes from burning with anger and being able to control that rage. He now knows that external power comes from holding the power of death and refusing to use it.

Mercy is a powerful, relentless weapon. It destroys empires and rebuilds lives.

He will wield that power for the rest of his life. He feels the instinct of it course through him as, shaky-handed, he pens a letter to the guardian he loves.

Alfred will be angry, but he will understand. That's how it's always been.

Bruce closes his eyes for a single moment and lets himself hear his butler's scolding voice with its undertone of care, to feel a hand on his shoulder and see the eyes that would try to convey disappointment but would only succeed in flashing concern.

He opens his eyes again and stands, determined. He knows what power is; it's time to learn how to use it.


	115. Handling

**Handling**

For one single, mad moment, standing in the cave underneath Wayne Manor, Alfred Pennyworth has a vision of his school days, days in which disobedience and reckless behavior were dealt with summarily—either by a slipper or a cane. Maybe, he thinks, those things shouldn't have been done away with. Maybe they'd have kept a barmy boy with an endless thirst for danger and no appreciation of risk whatsoever from venturing off by himself with a gun to confront a killer and then into the city with a lairy girl, wearing a black jacket and a pair of sneakers. For a minute or two, he feels very much like he should have been more strict with his ward, positively Medieval.

But he blinks and shakes his head and remembers those deep, intense eyes and the fierceness of his ward's desperation, his pain and grief and doubt. Harshness has never worked on him, and it never will. He is untempered steel—becoming, but still fragile. He needs careful handling. Perhaps he always will. Perhaps that will be the thing Alfred knows, forever, that no one else will ever quite realize.

After the first wave, it's not anger the butler feels. It's a mixture of fear and grief and disappointment. He just wants to hug the boy, to reassure him that he's done the right thing in not killing his parents' murderer. To make him feel safe.

He remembers a day several years before the murders, a day when Bruce had been particularly stubborn. "You're a patient man, Alfred," Thomas had commented when he and his wife had finally arrived home and sent their tired and irritable little son to bed.

"Thank you, Sir. I try to be," he'd answered, thinking that no one could have ever said that about him in his whole life—until the boy had come along.

"Would you like to tuck him in?" Martha had asked, "You've earned the right, or have you had as much as you can take?"

"I'll do it," Alfred had growled, and he'd dutifully made his way up the stairs, mentally preparing himself to face an angry child. Instead, he'd found a sleepy Bruce curled up on his side with a stuffed animal.

"Are you mad?" The child's voice had been so soft he could hardly understand it.

Alfred had shaken his head. "Not a bit."

"Why not?" The syllables had come slowly, sleepily.

"I reckon it's because I care about you, even when you're cross and naughty. You're still my Master B," the butler had answered in his honest way.

"Oh." Bruce had nodded and closed his eyes, and the butler had pulled the covers over him and bent down to brush his cheek with a calloused hand.

"I love you, Alfred." The words had been warm breaths against his ear.

He has treasured those words for nine years, and he remembers them now. He loves his Master B, even when he's reckless and insufferable, and the boy loves him, even when he's cross and short-tempered and has no idea how to be a father. That's what matters in the end, and it's what keeps him sane as he rereads the note in his hand.


	116. Yin and Yang

**Yin and Yang**

It hurts, but it doesn't feel bad. It's not that he enjoys the pain, but it gives him a deep sense of calm focus, the ability to shut out everything in the world except his fist connecting with flesh and bone and his opponent's fists connecting with his own body, reminding him that he's not as fragile as he feels inside.

He doesn't have to win. Someday, he will. Of that he has no doubt. But for now it's enough to understand how it works, that the laser focus of his righteous anger at Tommy Elliot can be his any time he needs it, that it's not a passing feeling; it's part of his soul.

He can see in Selina's face that he's gone to a place inside where she will never follow. She is practical, matter-of-fact, as clever as a cat and just as resourceful. Her mission is to survive, not to crusade. He's glad. He doesn't want to look at her and see a mirror. He just wants to see a friend.

Bruce knows nothing about yin and yang. He doesn't know that he is a half of something, that for his city he will come to represent that half for all of its people. And he has no idea that the girl stitching him back together is the other half, the wild half, the half who can't be bought or sold, a cat who will always go where she pleases until she finally comes home.

Pain is like a drug to him; for her it is a fact of life.

Bruce is like a drug to her; for him she is a fact of life.


	117. Alone

**Alone**

"You look tired, Alfie. The boys are gone anyway. Why don't we order in delivery and watch a film? All of this will still be here tomorrow." Alfred looks up from his dishwashing to meet the eyes of Martha Wayne, who is standing in the kitchen doorway wearing jeans and an oversized sweater.

"I'd planned to make you your favorite pizza, the one with anchovies that they hate."

She smiles. "All right, then. I'll help. And then a movie."

Alfred nods. "As you wish." It's from the Princess Bride. Martha laughs appreciatively.

She's not as good a cook as he is, but she's not bad, and she's certainly a capable assistant. When Alfred had first come to the manor, he'd never have let her step foot in the kitchen, but by now he's learned that you don't tell Martha Wayne what she can't do. You just get out of the way.

That's why she calls him Alfie, and it's why he feels like he has a sister.

Thomas and Bruce are gone on their annual trek through the Wayne Manor property, but he doesn't mind. He likes the company of the beautiful, graceful woman who moves in sync with him and makes funny faces when she hands him tomatoes.

He's not in love with her; it's never been that way. They're just—family. He hopes that as the boy grows (he's not far from being a teenager now) that it won't change, that he'll still be able to count on laughing at her jokes and watching strange surrealist films with her in the casual family den. Thomas hates them; Alfred finds them fascinating. Martha just loves them.

"Thank you, Alfie." Martha nods as he hands her a spatula to help spread tomato sauce.

He should hate the nickname—he does hate it, from everyone but her. When Martha says it, it's like being teased by a little sister. He doesn't mind that at all.

* * *

It's been over a year since Martha's singing has filled the halls of Wayne Manor, keeping Alfred company while her husband and son were away. He's alone now; he wants to see her, to hear her loud laugh, to fight with her about letting him clean up from dinner.

He misses Thomas, too, but it's the loneliness that triggers his memories of Martha. She'd always know that he hated it when her husband and Bruce were gone—both of them, but especially the boy. "He adores you," she'd said, one day when he was putting one of Bruce's drawings onto the refrigerator.

"I don't know about that," he'd mumbled.

"I do," she'd said with certainty. "And I sleep better at night because you adore him."

That conversation comes back to him as he's dusting the last of the master wing, a place he still doesn't really like to go. At the time, he'd taken it as a flattering compliment, but he can't help wondering now if she'd somehow had a premonition that someday he would be the one trying to raise her son to adulthood.

Trying.

He prays that she and Thomas know that he's doing his best, that they know about the embraces between the yells and the tears and the running off, the smiles of pure camaraderie that live between the angry standoffs.

Doing my best, he mumbles to his dust rag. Doing my best.


	118. The Nickname

**The Nickname**

"I'd better not catch you prowling about at night like a burglar, Master B. I know what you get up to when I take my eyes off you." The first time Bruce hears his new nickname is nine months after his parents' deaths. It's in the middle of a scolding; he'd thought his nights of practicing sneaking out, using Selina's instructions, had been successfully secretive. He now learns that, as usual, Alfred knows exactly what he's been up to.

He smiles because he likes the title. It's less formal than his full name, the way their relationship is less formal now. Alfred glares. "Smile all you like, but I'm thinking of getting one of those tracking bracelets they use for house arrests."

Bruce shakes his head. "You don't need one. You always know where I am."

"And don't forget it," Alfred says, no longer sounding irritated. "Off with you. Get to your schoolwork." Bruce is sent away with a pat to the shoulder, still smiling to himself, not sure why missing four letters from his name makes him so happy.

* * *

"I'm hungry, Alfred." Bruce stands in the doorway of the Wayne Manor kitchen, so famished his stomach is killing him.

"I'll fix something right away, Master B." Alfred looks up from wiping down the stove and smiles at him, his eyes crinkling at the corners.

Just then, Bruce is jerked awake by a hand shaking his shoulder. "Get up, sleepy. If we don't move now, we won't be able to steal enough money for breakfast." He opens his eyes to see an insistent Selina Kyle leaning over him.

The boy follows his friend out of their alley lair and into the darkness and chill of the nighttime, feeling the growling hunger that had assailed him in his dream. Only, out here in the Gotham streets, there's no Wayne Manor, and, more importantly, no Alfred.

He realizes now why he likes the nickname his butler only uses sometimes. It feels warm and safe and familiar, something between them, a name no one but his guardian will ever have a reason to give him. Every time Alfred says it, it feels like having a blanket wrapped around him to protect him against a cold world.

"You ok?" Selina whispers, not wanting to wake up any of the drunks or vagrants they pass.

"Yeah, I was just thinking about Alfred," he admits.

Selina doesn't answer for a few seconds, but then, in the dark of night, she's honest with him. "Be glad you have somebody to miss, kid. I wish I had somebody waiting for me."

Bruce reaches out and takes her hand, as if to say, "I'm here." She doesn't pull away.

* * *

**A/N: "Prisoners" was all about Gordon and Oswald, so I'm on my own imagining what Bruce, Selina, and Alfred are up to. This chapter and the next one are inspired by the fact that Sean Pertwee recently said in an interview that he knows he should stop calling Bruce "Master" Bruce, because he's technically getting too old for that title (which refers to a child), but he can't remember not to. David corroborated this, and they said that it's not even written into the scripts any more, but Sean never remembers not to say it because that's how he thinks of him. **

**At the same time, Sean used the title "Master B" in a recent ep, which I'm pretty sure was improvised by him and just left in the scene, because it's been his personal nickname for David on social media since the show started. **


	119. Master B

**Master B**

He should stop calling the boy "Master Bruce." It's a child's title, and his ward is no longer a little boy. Besides. he has no father to use up the name "Mr. Wayne" any more. Maybe his first name would suffice. It might be too painful for Bruce to hear his father's title all the time.

Alfred has these conversations with himself fairly often, but they never matter. Bruce is always "Master" when it comes down to it, because when the butler looks at him, he still sees the five-year-old who always crawled into his lap to fall asleep when his parents were out, the seven-year-old who loved pancakes made into animal shapes, the twelve-year-old who ran into his arms the night his parents died. He still sees a child.

"Master B" isn't any better. Maybe it's worse. It's affectionate, not formal. Far from the address of a proper butler to his boss. The furthest thing from "Mr. Wayne."

But it's right. It's right for a man and a boy who fight side-by-side to train and then spar verbally when Bruce is stubborn. It's the right nickname for a ward who is far more of a son than an employer. And it's the the right nickname from a butler who is also a guardian and protector and comforter.

Alfred imagines what he'll say when his charge returns home. He should be furious. But he won't be, because the boy isn't Bruce, or Mr. Wayne, or any other formal thing to him. He's just Master B, that's all. He's just the person Alfred cares about most in the world, and when the butler lays eyes on him, his anger will evaporate the way it always does. The way it always will.


	120. Home

**Home**

"You know, Master Bruce—you and Miss Kyle are always at cross purposes. She wants to survive, and there's nothing wrong in that at all, but you've chosen something else, quite unlikely to facilitate survival, if you ask me, and it's not right to pull her into your crusade when she just wants to live her life on her own terms. You know I'm right."

Bruce looks up from contemplating the Caesar Salad in front of him. It's not like Alfred to try to justify his own opinions after the fact. He puts his foot down, and that's the end of it. Bringing something up again means he's—not exactly sorry, but that he feels bad. Bruce finds it strangely comforting.

The boy rubs his sleeve across his tired eyes. "You're right, Alfred. I did what you said. I'm not arguing with you. But—" he hesitates.

"But what?" The butler takes his empty plate and puts a steak down in front of him.

"You're part of this, and it's not your fight, either."

Alfred takes his own place at the table. "No, you're my fight."

Bruce looks over at him, studying his face. He'd been angry at first, furious at is guardian's interference, yet again, in his life and his plans. But he's not angry now. He can't be angry at the man who'd thought of Selina's safety even when he'd lost sight of it, whose face only registers concern.

"Alfred are you—mad at me for leaving?" Alfred is quiet for a moment; Bruce watches him.

"What do you think? Read me. Use what you know about me." It's a skill that's been part of Bruce's training, one he's taken to very well.

The boy blinks, thinking. "You were angry, at first, and then you were worried. And when I came back, you'd already decided that no matter what, you weren't letting me leave again." He stares back at his plate.

Alfred smiles. "Very good, Master B. You're coming along."

Bruce breathes in the stillness of the room, feeling his sadness begin to slip away like the tide, replaced by a feeling of calm reassurance. When he feels courageous again, he looks up and meets Alfred's eyes. "I'm glad to be home."


	121. All's Well

**All's Well**

Alfred passes through the house, turning out lights and making sure locks are secure. He feels serene. The boy is once again secured, safe in his room in the inner recesses of Wayne Manor, just where he should be. Still, he can't resist turning his tread toward Bruce's wing to check on his ward.

"May I come in?" He knocks lightly on the closed door.

"All right." He finds Bruce reading in bed, an actual novel, not a file, thank goodness.

"Do you want anything?"

"No," says Bruce, "but you do." He stands up and glides across the room—he''s good at moving noiselessly, has a talent for it—and comes to stand in front of his guardian, hair mussed and eyes beginning to get heavy with sleepiness.

Alfred looks down at him, though not as far down as he used to have to look. "Come here, you." He embraces Bruce, fiercely. The boy wasn't wrong; this is what he wanted.

"Master Bruce, you're impossible, deceitful, stubborn, reckless, and I missed you."


	122. Good Men

**Good Men**

Bruce is tangled up inside, his mind bearing the dawning realization that his crusade, his determination to prove himself, his fire-eaten need for justice are about more than himself. It's both a blessing and a curse to learn about the fallibility of his own parents, something all children learn one way or the other. He's learning it young, much like everything else. Too soon.

He doesn't want to be his father. He does want to be his father. He can't decide. He can't reconcile the mild-mannered doctor with the man who started experiments so dangerous they left the door open for Huge Strange. Playing with nature, even for a good cause, leads to pain and death. The boy already knows this; he wishes he'd had no reason to know.

The girl, Karen, loves him because she loved his father, loved him enough to sacrifice herself for his son. That kind of man—the kind of man who made people love him that much—he must have been a good man.

But good men, Bruce is coming to understand, are not perfect men. Sometimes they're fathers who make mistakes so big they die because of them. Sometimes they're cops who get the city's dirt on them because they're just trying to protect it. Sometime's they're butlers who yell and console in equal measure.

There's comfort in it, between the sadness and fear. Comfort in knowing that it's possible to be good without being perfect.

There's a hand on Bruce's shoulder; his butler stands by his side. They are neither one perfect, he thinks, with their flaws and quirks and arguments. But there is love between them, just as there was love between Thomas and Martha Wayne that spilled over like a waterfall onto their only son. And it is love, in the end, that makes imperfect men good.


	123. Father's Son

**Father's Son**

Alfred is not normally given to self-deception; he sees no benefit in it. But somewhere along the way, staring across a low lit room at Jim Gordon and Bruce Wayne, he realizes there's something he hasn't been willing to admit to himself, not once since the murders, not even when Bruce was standing in his father's cave: No matter what Alfred does, the boy will be like Thomas Wayne. He has his mother's eyes, her sweetness, her honesty. But he has his father's soul.

He sees now, looking back through the months like pages of a book once read but not comprehended. All along he's been trying to stop the inevitable, to be a stopgap father who can somehow turn a son away from what he was always meant to be.

He remembers conversations from years before, like snippets of forgotten music, arguments with the father that were not so very different from arguments with his son. Long ago, he'd tried to stop Thomas Wayne from taking up a cause that was sure to destroy him, only to find out that nothing in him was strong enough to dissuade his fire-eaten friend.

Now, in the evening light, Bruce looks so much like his father that the butler feels stuck in a time warp, returned once more to the days long ago when he'd been pulled toward a crusade he'd thought was as fruitless as Don Quixote fighting a field of windmills.

He will help the boy just as he served the father.

_But it's different,_ he whispers under his breath. _He's—my child too. I can't lose him. Not now._

Alfred is used to Martha Wayne coming to him in dreams, in thoughts, like an ever-present guide, but this time it is the father's voice he hears inside him.

_He's yours, Alfred, and that's why he's going to succeed where I couldn't. Because you're part of him now. _

Ghosts don't exist; of that Alfred is sure. He is well aware that it's his own thoughts he hears, answering, confirming.

No self-deception. No dishonesty. He finally admits the truth he knows: The boy is like his father, but he is not just the child of Thomas Wayne. He is also the son of Alfred Pennyworth, and that means he'll be strong enough to finish what his father started, to do whatever must be done.

He has the love of his mother, the soul of his father, and the strength of his butler. It will be enough.


	124. Disillusioned

**Disillusioned**

Sometimes, in the late nighttime, Bruce remembers when his whole life was not a conversation about justice, when it wasn't a question of taking down a murderer himself or letting the police do it, when his existence wasn't defined by one terrible night. The night of his baptism by fire into the true darkness of the world around him. He wonders, now, how he could have sleepwalked through life without realizing, without seeing the darkness that pervades the streets of his city, the sneers underneath the smiles.

His parents had not wanted him to see the things he sees now. Sometimes he's grateful; other times he's angry. A few times, to his own horror, he's found himself blaming their deaths on their own naiveté. He punishes himself for these lapses—a skipped meal, a night spent sleeping on the floor. He hopes Alfred hasn't noticed; he's not sure. Alfred notices things.

But a missed meal isn't much against a resurrected madman and a police force dying one by one. The question of justice is no longer theoretical; it's survival. There's little the police can do against a darkness that raises the dead.

Bruce has always been logical, long before he understood anything about the real Gotham. He understands probabilities. He knows it isn't logical, the idea that one single person can do anything to stem the tide of darkness.

But he can't help wanting to try. Not when he sees Theo Galavan alive on TV—after his very public death. There's more than normal evil awake on the streets of Gotham, and that means more than normal good is needed to stop it.


	125. Blame

**Blame**

"You didn't eat much. Are you worried about Galavan?"

Alfred is perplexed, not that that's unusual, these days. Lately, he's noticed a pattern—a missed meal here and there, a few mornings when he's gone to wake the boy and found him asleep somewhere other than his bed. He'd thought they were past that sort of thing.

Bruce shakes his head no. The butler isn't surprised. It couldn't be anything that straightforward. It never is.

"Are you missing your parents?" He tries to make his voice as gentle as possible, as nonthreatening as he can.

"Sure," says the boy quickly. "That's it."

He's lying. Alfred can always tell. He takes a deep breath, willing down the irritation that automatically fills him at having to, once again, deal with Bruce's complicated reticence to explain anything he's thinking or feeling without having it coaxed out of him like blood from a turnip.

"The truth, please," he says, trying to be as patient as possible, waiting in the doorway of Bruce's favorite room, watching his pajama-clad ward sit rigid and pale in front of his computer.

The boy looks over at him, obviously considering. "I—wasn't hungry."

It's another lie. The butler considers whether to fight pitched battle here or wait for another opportunity. After a moment, he digs in, too fed up to let it go. He folds his arms. "The truth, Master B. I have all night, and this is the only way out of this room."

Bruce stairs down at his own hands and Alfred waits, wondering at his ward's deflated expression. "Alfred—I'm not a very good son."

"What do you mean?" Finally, something genuine.

Bruce looks up again, shame on his face. He hardly speaks above a whisper. "Sometimes—I feel like blaming them for dying, for not being more careful, since Gotham is so dangerous. Sometimes I think they should have known better." The boy is speaking so softly by the end that Alfred can barely make out the words.

"All right," he answers neutrally. "What does that have to do with you not eating and sleeping?"

Bruce tenses up, pulling into himself and clenching his fists and speaks in a louder, angrier voice. "I shouldn't think that. It's—it's wrong to blame them. I deserve to be punished."

Alfred sighs to himself in relief. Finally. He figures he should have known it was something like this. Bruce Wayne is worse than a self-flagellating monk, his every thought and action self-scrutinized to the point of insanity. But the butler knows how to deal with these things much better than he used to.

"Come here," he says, inclining his head. He leads the boy down the hall to his own suite of rooms. Bruce follows obediently, his head down.

Alfred pulls the coverlet down from his bed. "You're going to sleep here for the foreseeable future, and I'll take the couch in my sitting room. That way I can make sure you're actually in bed sleeping every night." Obediently, the tired boy lies down on his guardian's king-sized bed, moving onto his side, his wide-awake eyes filled with guilt.

Alfred sits on the bed beside the boy's inert form. "Master Bruce, do you think I've never considered what culpability your parents had that night? Do you think I haven't had thoughts I was ashamed of? We've both seen more ugliness in Gotham than seems possible, and I've often wondered if their approach to it was the best it could have been." Cautiously, he puts out his hand and rests it on the boy's shoulder, leaving it there. "I've even been angry at them for being gone, not that I'm proud of it. The point is, grief isn't always rational, and it doesn't always make you angry at the right people. That's just the way it works. If you don't just let it come, it'll eat you up inside. It's better to just let it out."

To his relief, he feels some of the tension leave Bruce's body as he finishes speaking. "Thank you, Alfred." The boy sounds like he's near tears, so the butler doesn't move. He just sits, silent and dependable, while Bruce cries, not taking his hand away from the quivering shoulder or saying anything else.

After a while, when his ward's breathing is leveling back out, he speaks softly again. "I won't have you punishing yourself for being human, Master Bruce. That's an order." He punctuates his words by ruffling Bruce's hair. "How go to sleep."

Alfred gets up and tucks the covers around his ward, hoping he's made a difference.


	126. Vanquished

**Vanquished**

Bruce doesn't expect the thing that jerks him back to reality to be the sight of his butler wielding a sword against the undead zombie mayor, but that's exactly what happens. There's little time for self-recrimination when you're running away from a monster, and you can't deny someone cares about you when he's willing to fight that monster to protect you, with his bare hands if need be. The obsessive question of blame no longer occupies him as the question of survival takes over, and he finds inside himself the strength to fight—though he's not yet strong enough to win.

That night, Azrael vanquished, he goes to bed in Alfred's room, just as the butler ordered, but he has no trouble sleeping at all. In fact, he knows his parents would be proud of him, and that crowds out his guilt and confusion over his feelings about them. Maybe they wouldn't have wanted to raise a son who has to fight, but they'd be proud of his courage all the same.

Alfred certainly is. He prepares Bruce his favorite meal and then turns on one of the boy's favorite films in his suite so he can watch it while he falls asleep.

Bruce sits up, propped against Alfred's headboard, and sips tea from the butler's nightstand. "Are you all right, Alfred?" he asks. After all, Azrael had defeated the butler before getting to him.

"Right as rain," his guardian answers. He's wearing his robe and sitting in a chair by the bed, ready to go sleep on the sofa in his antechamber.

The boy smiles, widely and genuinely. It's been a while since he's felt like doing that, but this has been a good day.


	127. Worth It

**Worth It**

Alfred was as bewildered as his charge at the fact that it was Azrael, or Galavan, or whatever that creature was, that had managed to bring a smile back to Bruce's face. He wondered, for a fleeting second, if it was entirely healthy that a violent fight with a zombie madman would be the thing that seemed to clear the boy's thoughts and center him back in the moment.

But he didn't dwell on it. Bruce's life was not the life of most children, and Gotham was not like most cities. Better that the boy learn to fight hard now than be a weak target later.

Besides, he was proud. He cooked Bruce's favorite foods and then turned on one of the Sherlock Holmes films he liked, happy to see the boy looking, if not lighthearted, at least clear-eyed and calm. He wouldn't have to keep Bruce in his suite after all. Maybe a night or two more, just to show that he still intended on being the one in charge, but Bruce was having no trouble eating, and Alfred thought he'd probably sleep soundly.

Never in a lifetime would the butler welcome something like the reanimated corpse of Theo Galavan descending on the Manor, but if that was what it took to break Bruce out of his preoccupations, it was, he thought, very close to worth it.


	128. Breathless

**Breathless**

Another day, another lecture. Bruce has heard so many by now that part of him thinks he should be able to just tune them out. But he can't, not when Alfred is the one doing the lecturing and Selina Kyle is the subject.

The problem is, she always seems so strong, so capable, so beyond harm—until something like the Arkham debacle. It's too easy for Bruce to forget that just because she says she can do something doesn't mean she has the judgment to make the decision. She's just—so—self-assured. She leaves him breathless, even though he's known her for a long time now. He still can't keep up with her.

That's why Alfred's words cut him deeply, why it hurts more to be told that he's endangered his friend than it would to be yelled at about anything else, including his own safety. Much of the time, Bruce feels like he's close to becoming a man, but Alfred can make him feel ten years old again at the drop of a hat.

The problem is, he's addicted to Selina Kyle, and when she tells him she can do something—well, it's a little like being drunk, not that Bruce really knows what that's like. It's just that, when he's around her, he believes anything is possible, and it's a feeling he can't shake. It's Selina.


	129. Fatherly

**Fatherly**

Alfred knows it's not the best time to be lecturing his ward, not in the middle of a war with Hugo Strange, with monsters on the streets of Gotham, but he can't help it when his worry explodes out of him in the form of a stern parental invective about not involving Selina Kyle in the boy's plans, no matter how old and capable she seems. Ever since he's been the boy's guardian, he's seen various signposts pointing to how fatherly he's become. He figures this is a big one—taking time out of the fight to lecture his child. Something only a parent would do.

Later, he laughs at himself, not that he regrets correcting Bruce, who's altogether too willing to believe Selina's own opinion of her invincibility, rather than accepting reality. No, he laughs at the sheer normalcy of it, his fatherly moment a spot of regularity in the midst of insanity. He's frustrated by having to address the same behavior with Bruce yet again, but maybe it's not all bad—maybe reminding his ward that he's not too old for a dressing-down isn't the worst thing in the world. Bruce lives in a surreal world of privilege and danger and intrigue. Maybe a fatherly lecture is just what the doctor ordered to keep him from getting lost in his own rumination again.

Alfred can see in the boy's face that he cares, that it matters to him that he's displeased his guardian and put the girl in harm's way. It's comforting to know that even as Bruce grows and matures, the butler still has that power, still has the ability to bring him up short and show him the error of his ways if he needs to. It's not a power he uses often, but he's grateful he still has it.


	130. Retreat

**Retreat**

"It's time to go, Master Bruce." Alfred inclines his head toward the airport doorway, as a pleasant female voice intones that it's time for first class to board. Bruce nods obediently and gets up from his seat at the gate, dropping his empty coffee cup into the trashcan as he passes it.

"I still don't want to go," he says softly, but he goes anyway, knowing that he's not going to convince his guardian otherwise; he's already tried everything.

"We've been over this, Master B," says Alfred quietly, his tone a mixture of patience and frustration. "You're ahead in school, the caretaker will care for the house, and it's too dangerous for you to be in Gotham just now. Switzerland is exactly where we need to be."

Bruce takes his seat in the third row of the plane next to the butler and nods. "I know, but now that we know about the Council, we need to act fast." He's agitated and nervous. He has been since his ordeal with Nygma and Fox and the poisoned gas. He hasn't talked it over with Alfred, but he's still having nightmares.

The butler puts a warm hand on his arm. "We have Bullock and Fox in Gotham, and there's nothing you can do right now but get yourself killed. When things have calmed down, we'll go home and see what they've come up with."

Bruce doesn't talk for the rest of the flight. He tries to sleep, but every time he does, he hears Nygma's voice and tastes sheer terror. He wants to be brave, but he can't shake the memory.

Finally, he turns on a movie, some children's cartoon from the 90s that he never had time to watch, and stares at it without paying any attention to what it's about, hoping Alfred will think he's engrossed in it, that nothing's wrong, that he's not a coward.


	131. Family

**Family**

Alfred hears yelling. It takes him a few seconds to wake up, but as soon as he's coherent, he runs down the hall of the chalet to Bruce's room, only to find his ward in the middle of a nightmare. He's immediately flooded with relief that there's no other threat in the house, but he quickly sits down on the bed beside the boy and shakes his shoulder gently, trying to pull him out of his dream.

It takes a few moments, but Bruce finally comes to and opens his eyes as beads of sweat cover his forehead. "Alfred?"

"You, Old Son, were having a nightmare," Alfred says, leaving his hand on the boy's shoulder. "Been having them a lot, haven't you? I noticed you looked tired." His tone is curious, not accusatory. He doesn't want the boy to feel ashamed.

Bruce blushes and nods into his pillow. "Since—since Fox and I were trapped. Every night. Like after my parents."

"You could've told me," Alfred says, trying not to sound miffed. "I'd have helped like I have before." He punctuates his words with light, calming pats to the boy's pajama-clad back.

Bruce turns his face toward the wall. "I—didn't want to be a coward."

Alfred sighs, mentally frustrated that they're back to this point, but not wanting to show it. "Master B," he says softly, "this past year, you've become braver than I ever thought someone your age could be. In fact, you could stand to be a little less brave, so I could have fewer heart attacks." He smiles.

Bruce turns toward him suddenly, all the force of the boy's intense gaze trained on him. "You think I'm brave?"

"Course I do."

Bruce smiles, obviously relieved. "Thank you, Alfred. That means—a great deal to me."

The butler smiles back. Bruce is sounding pedantic again. That's a good sign. "Now, how about I stay with you until you fall back to sleep, and tomorrow we'll figure out how to work on getting Nygma out of your head?" The boy nods and puts his hand out, clasping Alfred's for a moment before turning over and burrowing back into his covers.

Alfred stays beside his ward's bed for a long time, gratified to see the boy sleeping peacefully. Even after Bruce is far gone, he stays, quiet in the darkness of the boy's bedroom. He thinks about a year of peril in Gotham, a year that somehow strangely also included a great deal of bonding with Bruce.

"Only time in my life I was ever fired," he chuckles to himself, thinking about the day Bruce had tried to get rid of him for a few hours. "No way I'm going that easily," he thinks. Not after the promises he made to the parents—and now to Bruce himself.

He has fought with the boy, but that fighting has led to closeness he didn't think was possible, to a family until of two that is forged of trust and love. It's abnormal, maybe, but it works.

Gotham will never be an easy place, and Bruce will never be an easy child. But that doesn't mean the city or the boy are not worth sacrificing everything to save.

* * *

**A/N: I didn't mean to take so long to finish getting the companion chapters for Season 2 up, but I just got back from a trip to Iceland. Overall, I thought Season 2 was a step up from Season 1, and Sean and David were absolutely pitch perfect as Alfred and Bruce. I'm excited to see where they go from here. **

**I thought the first ep of Season 3 was great fun, and I'll get those chapters up very soon.**


	132. Alive

**Alive**

Bruce walks through Wayne Manor like a black-clad ghost, making sure everything is the way it should be. Not like the house hasn't been cared for in his absence, but he still feels the need to go through each wing and glance in every room.

He leaves his parents' rooms for last, taking his time. The rooms have been cleaned now, and Alfred finally culled through most of their possessions and saved the most valuable things for Bruce and gave the rest to charity, at Bruce's request. But the illusion is still there; Martha's perfume on the dresser, Thomas's half-finished novel on the nightstand. Even though the closets are almost empty now and the dust has been swept away, Bruce can still sit down on the edge of the king sized bed and imagine that his parents are only gone for an evening. Maybe it's strange. He doesn't care. He's not sure he'll ever want the rooms to be changed or used for anything else.

* * *

Bruce carries his sleeping son into the Manor, careful not to jostle or startle the precious burden in his arms. With steady tread, his feet take him to the wing that once belonged exclusively to Thomas and Martha Wayne. Now it's a hallway filled with bedrooms decorated for the children who have come into his life. He doesn't change the rooms, even when they move into places of their own. He wants them to feel at home when they visit.

His parents' bedroom is a little boy's room now, a place where animals are welcome and windows have been broken and replaced because of the accidents that come with childhood. The father puts his son into bed and covers him up with a thick quilt, brushing his hand across Damian's forehead the way Alfred used to do to him; he'd found it comforting.

He leaves the room smiling. There was a time when he couldn't imagine that room or the ones around it as anything but a monument to the people he loved who were dead and gone. Now he can't imagine it as anything but the vibrant place it is, a living tribute to the people he loves who are part of his life.

His parents, he has no doubt, would be proud.


	133. Home Again

**Home Again**

Alfred is glad the boy finally let him go through his parents' things. It certainly wasn't easy, and he'd shed a few tears, but he'd felt lighter when it was done. Still, Bruce insists on the rooms remaining as shells of what they were, like macabre museums of what used to be. He doesn't have the heart to refuse. It's not as if they need the space for anything else.

When they return from Switzerland, Alfred recalls why the arrangement unsettles him. He doesn't like glancing in and seeing the boy in the middle of his parents' bedroom with a glazed over expression, like he's left reality in favor of somewhere better. Bruce is less lost these days, but the rooms seem to make him regress, to retreat back into himself where Alfred can't go. At first, he'd supported the need to preserve the past, but now he wishes the boy would let him gut the rooms and turn them into something else entirely.

* * *

Alfred finds his employer coming out of the children's wing and into the main part of the Manor. "You look tired, Mr. B," he says. "Go on to bed. I'll check on Master Damian in a few minutes and make sure he's still settled."

"Thank you, Alfred." Bruce is eye-to-eye with him now, broad-shouldered and powerful, but he still wears the same smile he had when he was a child.

The butler glides through the house, turning off lights and closing doors, and finally makes a circuit back around to Damian's room. He peeks in and finds the Wayne heir on his side, covers thrown off him.

Quietly, he comes into the room and tucks the quilt back around the small boy; it's a chilly night. Damian opens his eyes for a second. Alfred isn't sure if he's really awake or not, but he reaches up and hugs the butler tightly, and Alfred returns the embrace with interest. Damian can be a holy terror during the day, but at night he's an angel, like his father before him.

Alfred smiles to himself, remembering when he'd wondered if that part of the house would ever be anything but a heartbreaking memorial to tragedy. He hadn't realized it then, but all it would take was an orphan named Dick Grayson to change everything.


	134. The Path

**The Path**

Bruce wakes up to his butler's arms, strong and steady. He used to think he would outgrow comfort and affection. He now realizes there is no age limit to that kind of deep-seated, primal need to be cared for and protected.

He has fragments of memories in his mind - a woman in a mask, a promise extracted by the threat of harm to everyone he loves. Somehow, secure in Alfred's embrace, those memories are bearable. He can begin to analyze and understand them, to bring order out of chaos because his guardian's love is a warm, centering anchor for his traumatized consciousness.

He doesn't know it now, but he will still seek those arms when he is old enough to have gray hair at his temples. The memory of that love and the strength it gives him will call him back to the city when he's half a world away. And he will watch, with tears in his eyes, as his own children center themselves in Alfred's embrace.

What he knows now is that safety is not contained in a place or in circumstances or in having everything figured out. Sometimes it's simply found in knowing the right person is there and that his arms will always be open, no matter what. Bruce had once thought depending on his butler was childish. Now he sees it for what it is - that the path to becoming a man can't be walked alone.


	135. Open

**Open**

Alfred has always been attuned to reactions, to the slightest change in behavior of those around him. It made him an excellent soldier and an even better butler. Now it enables him to be a guardian, a caretaker, even a father.

The boy's embrace is different this time. It's not avoidant and ashamed, the way it used to be when Bruce was dead set on being self-sufficient. And it's not desperate, like the brokenhearted clutching of the little boy after he had a nightmare or when his grief used to overwhelm him.

No, it's the solid, confident, reassuring embrace of a boy becoming a young man, one who's come through yet another trauma, but who's finally accepted that nothing he goes through will be his to bear alone.

That's why Alfred tucks the memory of that hug away. It's why, when he thinks of the nefarious council, part of him hates them for frightening the boy, but another part of him is almost grateful for what he now realizes: The boy knows he belongs to Alfred as much as Alfred has always felt like Bruce belonged to him. And he's finally secure in the knowing.

Sometimes the butler tries to imagine his ward's future. What could possibly be in store for the serious, brooding son he loves more than anything in the world? A wife? Children? It's hard to picture Bruce living a conventional life. What Alfred does know is that he will be part of it, until his last breath. His arms will always be open.

* * *

**A/N: This story just passed its two-year anniversary. Thanks to everyone who's been around a while and to all the newcomers. I cherish your comments. I still think David Mazouz and Sean Pertwee are doing brilliant work every week, and I'm still touched by their depiction of the story of how an orphan and a butler forge one of the greatest father-son relationships of all time. **


	136. Note from the Author

I didn't plan it this way, but I believe "Open" is going to be the final chapter of this story, at least for now. I had high hopes for Gotham, and I'd planned for this story to go as long as the show does. Not to rain on anyone's parade, but the show's writing is no longer living up to what I'd personally hoped for. I still enjoy what David Mazouz and Sean Pertwee are doing, but I'm finding that I no longer have enough interest to keep up with the rest of the show's storylines (and I need that context for this story to be coherent). At some future point, if I decide to binge and catch up, I may add to this.

If not, it's been an enjoyable ride, and I'm thrilled with the journey these characters have taken with each other. I've had a very fun time adding my own thoughts and headcanons. Thank you to everyone who has read, commented, and gotten in touch with me. I wish you a lot more happy times watching Gotham, reading fanfiction, or doing whatever else you enjoy.


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